In Memory of 
 
 Raymond Best 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 o
 
 OUTLINES OF HISTORY; 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY NUMEROUS 
 
 EMBRACING 
 
 PART L_ANCIENT HISTORY. | PART II.JODERN HISTORY. 
 PART III._OUTLL\ES OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 BY MARCIUS WILLSON, 
 
 1 1 * 
 
 AUTHOR or "AMERICAN HISTORY," "HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES," *-m\ 
 
 Eniuersilg (Ebition. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 IVISON & PHINNEY, 321 BROADWAY. 
 
 CHICAGO: S. C. GRIGGS & CO., Ill LAKE ST. 
 
 BUFFALO : PHINNEY & CO. CINCINNATI : MOORE, T7ILSTACH, KEYS & OO. 
 PHILADELPHIA : SOWER & BARNES. DETROIT : MORSE & SELLECK. 
 NEWBURGH : T. S. QCACKENBUSH. AXTBpRN : SEYMOUR & CO,
 
 \W55 
 
 ENTKRBD, according tc Act of Congress., in the year 1854, by 
 
 MARCIUS WILLSON, 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York.
 
 PREFACE TO THE UNIVERSITY EDITION* 
 
 THE author of tlie following work submits it to the Public with a few 
 remarks explanatory of its Plan, and of the endeavors of the writer to 
 prepare a useful and interesting text-book on the subject of General 
 History. 
 
 In the important departments of Grecian and Koman History he has 
 aimed to embody the results of the investigations of the best modern 
 writers, especially Thirlwall and Grote in Grecian, and Niebuhr and 
 Arnold in Koman History ; and in both Ancient and Modern History he 
 has carefully examined disputed points of interest, with the hope of 
 avoiding all important antiquated errors. 
 
 By endeavoring to keep the attention of the student fixed on the 
 history of the most important nations grouping around them, and treat- 
 ing as of secondary importance, the history of others, and by bringing 
 out in bold relief the main subjects of history, to the exclusion of com- 
 paratively unimportant collateral details, he has given greater fulness 
 than would otherwise be possible to Grecian, Roman, German, French, and 
 English history, and preserved a considerable degree of unity in the nar- 
 rative ; while the importance of rendering the whole as interesting to the 
 student as possible, has been kept constantly in view. 
 
 The numerous Notes throughout the work were not only thought 
 necessary to the geographical elucidation of the narrative, by giving to 
 events a distinct " local habitation," but they also supply much useful ex- 
 planatory historical information, not easily attainable by the student, and 
 which could not be introduced into the text without frequent digressions 
 that would impair the unity of the subject. 
 
 In addition to the Table of Contents, which contains a general analysis 
 of the whole work, a somewhat minute analysis of each Chapter or Sec- 
 tion, given at the beginning of each, is designed for the use of teachers 
 and pupils, in place of questions. 
 
 In the "School Edition," Part III., containing * Outlines of the Philosophy of History," U 
 omitted.
 
 iv 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The author has devoted less space to the History of ihe United States 
 of America than is found in most similar works, for the reason that he 
 has already published for the use of schools, a " History of the United 
 States," and also a larger " American History ;" and, furthermore, that 
 as the present work is designed as a text-book for American students, 
 who have, or who should have previously studied the separate history cf 
 their own country, it is unnecessary, and, indeed, impossible, to repeat the 
 same matter here in detail ; and something more than so meagre an 
 abridgment of our country's annals as a General History must nec- 
 essarily be confined to, is universally demanded. 
 
 The author is not ignorant that he will very probably be charged with 
 presumption in heading Part III. of the present work with the am- 
 bitious title of " Philosophy of History," although he professes to give 
 only its " Outlines ;" nor is he ignorant that a great critic has expressed 
 the sentiment, that as the vast Chaos of Being is unfathomable by Human 
 Experience, so the Philosophy of all History, could it be written, would 
 require Infinite wisdom to understand it. But although the whole mean- 
 ing of what has been recorded lies far beyond us, the fact should not 
 deter us from a plausible explanation of what is known, if, haply, we may 
 thereby lead others to a more just appreciation of the true spirit the 
 Genius of History and the great lessons, social, moral, and political, 
 which it teaches. With the explanatory remark that our brief and very 
 imperfect sketches of the Philosophy of History were not designed to en- 
 lighten the advanced historical scholar, but to lead the student beyond 
 the narrow circle of facts, back to their causes, and onward to some of 
 the important deductions which the greatest historians have drawn from 
 them, we present these closing chapters as a brief compend of the history 
 of Civilization, in which we have aimed to do justice to the cause of Re- 
 ligion, Intelligence, and Virtue, and the cause of Democracy, the great 
 agents of regeneration and Human Progress ; and we commend thia 
 portion of our work to the candor of those who have the charity to ap- 
 preciate our object, and the liberality to connect with it our disclaimer 
 of any other merit than that of having laboriously gathered and analyzed 
 the results of the researches of others, and reconstructed them with some 
 degree of unity of plan, and for a good purpose, into these forms of <m 
 own.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS, 
 
 PART I. 
 
 ANCIENT HISTORY. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE EARLY AGES OF THE WORLD PRIOR TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF GRECIAN HISTORY 
 
 I. The Creation Antediluvian History. II. Egyptian History. Ill Asiatic History. Page 1120 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 FABULOUS AND LEGENDARY PERIOD OF GRECIAN HISTORY ; ENDING WITH THE 
 CLOSE OF THE TROJAN WAR, 1183 B. C. 
 
 I. Geography of Greece. IT. Grecian Mythology. III. Earliest inhabitants of Greece. IV. 
 Foreign settlers in Greece. V. The Hellenes. VI. The Heroic Age- Page 20 43. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE UNCERTAIAN PERIOD OF GRECIAN" HISTORY : FROM THE CLOSE OF THE TROJAN 
 WAR TO THE FIRST WAR WITH PERSIA: 1183 TO 490 B. 0. 693 YEARS. 
 
 I. Thessalian conquest, If. Boeotian conquest III. ^Eolian migration. IV. Return of the 
 Heraclidie. V. Institutions of Lycursus. VI. First Messenian War. VII. Second Messe- 
 nian War. VIII. Draco. IX. Legislation of Solon. X. Expulsion of the Pisistratids. 
 XI. Ionic Revolt Page 4358. 
 
 COTEMPORARY HISTORY. I. Phoenician History. II. Jewish History. III. Roman History. 
 IV. Persian History Page 5873. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE AUTHENTIC PERIOD OF GRECIAN HISTORY. 
 
 SECTION I. FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE FIRST WAR WITH PERSIA, TO THE ESTABLISH- 
 MENT OF PHILIP ON THE THRONE OF MACEDON : 490 to 360 B. c. 130 YEARS. 
 I. First Persian War. II. Second Persian War. III. Third Messenian War. IV. First Pelo- 
 ponnejian War. V. The Sicilian Expedition. VI. Second Pelopunuesian War. VII. Third 
 
 Peloponnesian War. VIII. Second Sacred War Page 7392 
 
 SECTION II. FROM THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PHILIP ON THE THRONE OF MACEDON, TO THE 
 
 REDUCTION OF GREECE TO A ROMA., PROVINCE I 360 TO 146 B. C. 214 YEARS. 
 
 I. Philip of Macedon. II. Alexander the Great his conquests, and death. III. Achaean 
 League, and conquest of Greece by the Romans ... Page 92 1 1 1. 
 
 COTEMPORARY HISTORY. I. History of the Jews. II. Grecian Colonies. HI. Magna Graecia. 
 IV. Cyrenaica Page 111123. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ROMAN HISTORY, FROM THE FOUNDING OF ROME, 753 B. C., TO THE CONQUESTS 
 OF GREECE AND CARTHAGE, 146 B. C. 607 YEARS. 
 
 SECTION I. EARLY ITALY : ROME UNDER THE KINGS : ENDING 510 B. C. 243 YEARS. 
 
 L Italy. II. Founding of Rome. III. War with the Sabines. IV. Numa. V. Tullus Hos- 
 tilius. VI. Ancus Martius. VII. Tarquin the Elder. VIII. Servius Tullius. IX. Tarquin 
 
 the Proud Page 123134 
 
 SECTION II. THE ROMAN REPUBLIC, FROM THE ABOLITION OF ROYALTY, 510 B. C., TO THE 
 BEGINNING OF THE WARS WITH CARTHAGE, 263 B. C. 247 YEARS. 
 
 I, Consuls. II. Etruscan War. III. Office of Dictator. IV. Plebeian Insurrection. V. Tri- 
 bunes of the People. VL Volscian and yEquian wars. VII. The Decemvirs. VIII. Office 
 of Censors. IX. War with Veil. X. Gallic Invasion. XI. Plebeian and Patrician con- 
 tests. XII. Office of Praetor. XIII. First Samnite War. XIV. Second Samnite War. XV. 
 Third Samnite War. XVI. War with the Tarentines and Pyrrhus Page 134150.
 
 6 CONTENTS. 
 
 SECTION III. THB ROMAN REPKBLIC, FROM THE BEGINNING or TH CARTHAGINIAN WARS, 
 
 263 B. C., TO THE REDUCTION OK GREECE AND C'ARTHAOK, 14(5 B. C. 117 YEARS. 
 
 I. Carthage. II. First Punic War. HI. Illyrian War. IV. War with the Gauls. V. Second 
 Funic War. VI. Grecian War. VII. Syrian War. VIII. Third Punic War. Page 150 1C5. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ROMAN HISTORY, FROM THE CONQUESTS OF GREECE AND CARTHAGE, 146 B. C, 
 TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. 
 
 I. Spain after the fall of Carthage. II. Servile war in Sicily. III. Dissensions of the Gracchi. 
 IV. Jugurthine War. V. Germanic Invasion. VF. TS:e Social War. VII. First Mith- 
 ridatic War. VIII. Civil wars between Marias and Sylla. IX. Servile war in Italy. X. 
 Second and Third Mithridatic wars. XI. Conspiracy of Catiline. XII. The First Triumvi- 
 virate. XIII. Civil war between Csesar and Pompey. XIV. The Second Triuravirrte. 
 XV. Octavius Augustus sole monarch of the Roman world, Page JC5 188. 
 
 PART II. 
 MODERN HISTORY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ROMAN HISTORY CONTINUED, FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN EEA, 
 TO THE OVERTHROW OF THE "WESTERN EMPIRE OF THE ROMANS : 
 
 A. D. 1 TO A. D. 476. 
 SECTION I. ROMAN HISTORY FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA TO TH 
 
 DEATH OF DOMITIAN, THE LAST OF THE TWELVE C-ESARS I A. D. 96. 
 
 t. Earlier and later history of the Empire compared. II. Julius Cassar. III. Augustus. IV. 
 Tiberius. V. Caligula. VI. Claudius. VII. Nero. VIII. Galba. IX. Otho. X. Vitellius. 
 XI. Vespasian. XII. Jewish war. XIII. Titus. XIV. Domiiian Page 1S8 302. 
 
 SECTION II. ROMAN HISTORY FROM THE DEATH OF DOMITIAN A. D. 96, TO THE ESTABLISH- 
 MENT OF MILITARY DESPOTISM, AFTER THE MURDER OF ALEXANDER SEVE'RUS, 
 
 A. D. 235: 139 YEARS. 
 
 I. N'erva. II. Trajan. III. Adrian. IV. Titus Antoninus. V. Marcus Aur61ius Antoninus. 
 VI. Com' modus. VII. Per' tinax. VIII. Didius Julianus. IX. Septim' ius Severus. X. 
 Caracalla. XI. Macrinus. XII. Elagabalus XIII. Alexander Severus.... Page 202 211. 
 
 SECTION III. ROMAN HISTORY, FROM THE ESTABLISHMENT OF MILITARY DESPOTISM AFTER 
 
 THE REIQN OF ALEXANDER SEVE'RUS, A. D. 235, TO THE SUBVERSION OF THE 
 
 WESTERN EMPIRE OF THE ROMANS, A. D. 470: 241 YEARS. 
 
 I. Maximin. II. Gordian. III. Pupienus and Balbinus. IV. Second Gordian. V. Philip the 
 Arabian. VI. Decius. VII. Gallus. VIII. ^Emilianus. IX. Valerian. X. Gallienus. Xf. M. 
 Airrelius Claudius. XII. Quintilius. XIII. Aurelian. XIV. Tacitus. XV. Florian. XVI. 
 Probus. XVII. Carus. XVIII. Numerian and Carinus. XIX. Diocletian. XX. Maxim'ian 
 XXI. Galerius and Constan' tius. XXII. Con' stantine. XXIII. Constantius II. XXIV. 
 Julian the Apostate. XXV. Jovian. XXVI. Valentin'ian and Valens. XXVII. Barbarian 
 inroads. XXVIII. Gratian and Theodusius. XXIX. Valentinian II. XXX. Honorius and 
 Arcadius. XXXI. Alaric the Goth. XXXII. Valentin'ian III. XXXIII. Conquests of 
 Attila. XXXIV. The Vandals. XXXV. Av' itus Ihijorian. XXXVI. Severus XXXVII. 
 Subversion of the Western Empire Page 211 235. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES : EXTENDING FROM THE OVERTHROW OF THK 
 
 WESTERN" EMPIRE OF THK ROMANS, A. D. 476, TO THK DISCOVERY OF 
 
 AMERICA, A. D. 1492 : 1016 YEARS. 
 
 BKCTION I. GENERAL HISTORY, FROM THE OVERTHROW OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE OF TH 
 
 ROMANS TO THE BEGINNING OF THE TENTH CENTURY : W4 YEARS. 
 
 L Introductory. II. The monarchy of the Ileruli. III. Monarchy of the Ostrogoths. IV. The 
 era of Justinian V. The Lombard monarchy. VI. The Saracen empire. VII. Monarchy 
 
 of the Franks. VIII. English History Page -235264, 
 
 SECTION II. GENERAL HISTORY DURING THE TENTH, ELEVENTH, TWELFTH, ANT> 
 
 THIRTEENTH CENTURIES : A. D. !)00 TO 1300 : 400 YEARS. 
 
 1. Complete Dissolution of the Bonds of Society. 1. Confusion of Historic materials. II. Thfl 
 Saracen world. III. The Byzantine empire. IV. Condition of Italy. V. Condition of Gcr 
 many. VL Conditf > if France Page 264270.
 
 CONTENTS. 1 
 
 i Tlie Feudal System, Chivalry, and the Crusades. I. The Feudal system. II. Chivalry. - 
 III. Origin of the Crusades.- IV. The First Crusade. V. The Second Crusade. VI. Tin- 
 Third Crusade. VII. The Fourth Crusade. VIII. The Fifth Crusade. IX. Tartar con 
 quests. X. The Sixth Crusade.-r-. Page 273 288 
 
 3. English History. I. England after the death of Alfred. IF. Norman conquest. III. Re- 
 duction of Ireland. IV. Subjugation of Wales. V. Scottish wars Page 288297. 
 
 SECTION III. GENERAL HISTORY DURING THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES. 
 
 1. England and France during the Fourteenth and Fifteenth centuries. I. French and English 
 wars, 1323 to 1453. II. Wars of the two Roses. III. Reign of Henry VII. of Eng- 
 land Page 297308. 
 
 '2. Other Nations at the close of the Fifteenth century. I. Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. II. 
 The Russian empire. III. The Ottoman empire. IV. Tartar empire of Tamerlane. V, 
 Poland. VI. The German empire. VII. Switzerland. VIII. Italian History. IX. 
 Spain Page 308318 
 
 3. Discoveries. Navigation. Magnetic Needle. Art of Printing. The Canaries. Cape da 
 
 Verd and Azore Islands. The Portuguese. Christopher Columbus. Vasco de Gama 
 
 Page 318322. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 GENERAL HISTORY DURING THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 1. Introductory. Unity of Ancient History. The Middle Ages. Modern History. Plan of the 
 subsequent part of the work. Europe, Asia, Egypt, The New World, at the beginning of 
 
 the sixteenth century Page 3-.J2 325. 
 
 2. The Jtge of Henry VIII. and Charles V. I. The States-system of Europe. II. The rivalry 
 between Francis I. and Charles V. HI. Henry VIII. of England. IV. The Reformation. 
 V. Abdication and retirement of Charles V Page 325339 
 
 3. The Age of Elizabeth. I. Mary of Scotland. II. Civil and religions war in France. III. 
 Massacre of St. Bartholomew. IV. The Netherlands. V. The Spanish Armada. VI. 
 Edict of Nantes. VII. Character of Elizabeth Page 339348. 
 
 4. Cote-mporary History. 1. The Portuguese Colonial Empire. II. Spanish Colonial Empire. 
 III. The Mogul Empire in India. IV. The Persian Empire Page 348353, 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 1. The Thirty years' War. I. The Palatine period of the war. II. Danish period Of th 
 war. III. Swedish period of the war. IV. French period of the war Page 353361. 
 
 2. English History : The English Revolution. I. Union of England and Scotland. II. James 
 I. III. Charles I. IV. Scotch Rebellion. V. The Long Parliament. VI. Civil war. VII. The 
 Scotch League. VIII. Oliver Cromwell. IX. Trial and execution of Charles I. X. Aboli- 
 tion of monarchy. XI. War with Holland. XII. The Protectorate. XIII. Restoration of 
 monarchy. XIV. James II. XV. Revolution of 1688 Page 361 377. 
 
 3. French History : Wars of Louis XIV. 1. Administration of Cardinal Richelieu. II. 
 Mazarin's administration. III. Louis XIV. His war with Spain. With the Allied Powers 
 England, Spain, Holland, and Sweden. Internal affairs of France. General war against 
 Louis. France at the end of the century Page 377385. 
 
 4. Cotemporary History. I. Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. II. Poland. III. Russia. IV. 
 Turkey. V. Italy. VI. The Spanish Peninsula. VII. Asiatic Nations. VIII. Colonial 
 Establishments. American History Page 385398. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTCRT. 
 
 1. Warofthc Spanish succession,andclo*eof the reign of Louis XIV. I. England, Germany, and 
 Holland declare war against France, I70.J. II. Campaign of 170-2. HI. Events of 1703. IV. 
 Events of 1704. V. Events of 1705-6. VI. Campaign of 1707. VII. Events of 1708. VIII. 
 1709. IX. Treaty of Utrecht, 1713. X. Character of the reign of Louis XIV... Page 398407. 
 
 5. Peter the Great of Russia, and Charles XII. of Sweden. I. The north and east of Europe. 
 IL Beginning of hostilities against Sweden. III. Defeat of the Russians at Narva. IV. 
 Victories of Charles in the year 170J. V. March of Charles into Russia. VI. Battle Of 
 Pultowa. VII. The Turks. VIII. Return of Charles. IX. Events of 1715. X. Death of 
 Charles. XI. His character. XII. Death and character of Peter the Great.. Page 407 418. 
 
 \ Spanish Wars anil War of the Jtustriin Succession. I. European Alliance. II. War 
 between England and Spain. III. Causes of the war of the Austrian succession. IV.
 
 8 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Coalu on against Austria. V. Events of 1742-3. VI. Events of 1744. VII. Events of 1745. 
 VIII. Invasion of England by the Young Pretender. IX. Events in America. X. 1746-7 
 XI. Treaty of Aix-la-Clmpelle, 1748 Page 4)8423. 
 
 4. The Seven Years' 1 War : 1756 1703. I. Eight years of peace. II. Causes of another war. 
 III. Beginning of hostilities in America. IV. European Alliances. V. First Campaign 
 Of Frederick, 1756. VI. 1757. VII. 1758. VIII. 1759.-IX. 1700. X. 17G1. XI. Peace 
 of 1763. XII. .Military character of Frederick Page 423 433. 
 
 5. State of Europe. The American Revolution. 1. General peace in Europe. IT. Franc*. 
 III. Russia. IV. Dismemberment of Poland. V. State of parties in England. VI. American 
 Taxation. VII. Opening of the war with the Colonies. VIII. European relations with 
 England. IX. Alliance between France and the American States. X. War between France 
 and England. XI. War between Spain and England. XII. Armed Neutrality against Eng- 
 land. XIII. Rupture between England and Holland. XIV. War in the East Indies. XV. 
 Treaty of 1782. XVI. General Treaty of 1783 Page 433445. 
 
 J, The French Revolution : 1789 1800. I. Democratic spirit. II. Louis XVI. III. Financial 
 difficulties. IV. The States-General. V. Revolutionary state of Paris. VI- Great political 
 changes. VII. Famine and mobs. VIII. New Constitution. IX. .Marshalling of parties. 
 X. The Emigrant Nobility. XI. Attempted escape of the Royal Family. XII. War de- 
 clared against Austria. XIII. Massacre of the 10th of August. XIV. Massacre of Sep- 
 tember. XV. Trial and execution of Louis XVI. XVI. Fall of the Girondists. XV II. 
 The Reign of Terror. XVHI. Triumph of Infidelity. XIX. Fall of the Dantpnists XX. 
 War against Europe. XXI. Insurrection of La Vendee. XXII. Insurrection in the south 
 of France. XXIU. Fall of Robespierre, and end of the reign of Terror. XXIV. The Eng- 
 lish victorious at sea, and the French on land. XXV. Second partition of Poland. XXVI. 
 Third partition of Poland 1795. XXVII. Dissolution of the coalition against France. 
 XXVIII. New Constitution. XXIX. Insurrection in Paris. 1796. XXX. Invasion of Ger- 
 many. XXXI. The Army of Italy. XXXII. Disturbances in England. 1797. XXXIII. 
 Napoleon's Austrian Campaign. XXXIV. Treaty of Campo Formio. XXXV. Establish- 
 ment of Military Despotism in France. 1798. XXXVI. Preparations for the invasion of 
 England. XXXVII. Expedition to Egypt.-XXXVIII. Battle of the Pyramids.-XXXIX. 
 Battle of the Nile. 1799. XL. Syrian Expedition. XLI. Siege of Acre. XL1I. Battle of 
 Mount Tabor. XLIII. Battle of Aboukir. XL1V. Overthrow of the Directory. XLV. Na- 
 poleon First Consul Page 445 475. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 SECTION I. THE WARS OF NAPOLEON : 18001815. 
 
 I. Events ofthe year 1800. Warwith Austria. II. Evsntsof 1801 HI. Events of 1802, the year 
 of peace. IV. Renewal of the war, 18U3.V. Ever .ts of 1804. Napoleon Emperor. VI. 1805, 
 Coalition against France. Battle of Austerlitz. VII. 1806, Louis Napoleon king of Holland. 
 Confederation of the Rhine. Battles of Jena and Auerstadt. VIII. 1807, Treaty of Tilsit. 
 IX. 1808, Events in Spain. Beginning of the Peninsular War. X. 18U9. War with Austria. 
 Battle of Wagram. Napoleon's divorce from Josephine. XI. J810, Busaco and Torres 
 Vedras. XII. 1811, Badujoz and Albuera. XIII. 1812, Russian Campaign. Smolensko 
 Borodino Moscow. American War. XIV. 1813, General coalition against Napoleon. 
 Lutzen Bautzen Leipsic. XV. 1814, Capitulation of Paris. Abdication of Napoleon. 
 XVI. 1815, Napoleon's return from Elba. Battle of Waterloo Page 475503. 
 
 SECTION II. FROM THE FALL OF NAPOLEON TO THE PRESENT TIME. 
 
 1. The Period of Peace : 1815 1820. I. Treaties of 1815. II. England. III. France 
 
 Page 506512. 
 
 2. Revolutions in Spain, Portugal, Naples, Piedmont, Greece, France, Belgium, and Po- 
 land : 18201831 Page 512550. 
 
 3. English Reforms. French Revolution of 1848. Revolution in the German States, Prussia, 
 and Austria. Revolution in Italy. Hungarian War. Usurpation of Louis Napoleon : 
 1831 185,! Page 5SO 562. 
 
 GENERAL GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL VIEWS, ILLUSTRATED 
 BY THE FOLLOWING MAPS. 
 
 1. Ancient Greece 5B4 
 
 2. Athens and its Harbors 506 
 
 3. Islands of the ^Egean Sea 508 
 
 4. Asia Minor 570 
 
 5. Persian Empire .572 
 
 6. Palestine 574 
 
 7. Turkey in Europe 576 
 
 8. Ancient Italy 578 
 
 9. Roman Erap'ire 580 
 
 10. Ancient Rome 582 
 
 11. Chart of the World 584 
 
 12. Battle Grounds of Napoleon, &c 586 
 
 13. France, Spain, and Portugal 588 
 
 14. Switzerland, Denmark, &c 590 
 
 15. Netherlands, (Holland and Belgium).. 592 
 1<>. Great Britain and Ireland 594 
 
 17. Central Europe 5^)6 
 
 18. United States of America 593 
 
 NOTE. For the "Index to the Geographical and Historical Notes" see end ofthe volume.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PART III. 
 
 OUTLINES OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 [OMITTED IN THE SCHOOL EDITION.] 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD. 
 
 1. Scriptural account 3f the Creation. IF. Geological History of the Earth. III. Unity of the 
 Human Race. IV. Institution of a Sabbath. V. The Origin of Discord. VI. Coincidences 
 between Sacred and Profane History. VII. Traditions of the Deluge. VIII. Ancient 
 Chronology Page 601 G25. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 EARLY EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, AND BABYLONIAN CIVILIZATION. 
 
 .. Exclusive policy of the Early Egyptians. II. Character of the testimony of Herodotus. III. 
 The three great Egyptian dynasties. IV. Egyptian History from Menes to Joseph. V. 
 Egyptian Hieroglyphics. VI. The Early Inhabitants of Egypt. VII. Dwellings and Public 
 Edifices of the Egyptians. VIII. Egyptian Sculptures and Paintings. IX. Astronomical 
 Knowledge. X. Mechanical Science. XL Art of Weaving. XII. Working of Metals. XIII. 
 Science of Medicine. XIV. Literary attainments. XV. Division into Castes. XVI. Re- 
 ligion. XVII. Materials of Assyrian History. X VIII. Assyrian Civilization, Page 625648. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CHARACTER AND EXTENT OF CIVILIZATION DURING THE FABULOUS 
 PERIOD OF GRECIAN HISTORY, 
 
 . Grecian Mythology. II. Legends of the Heroic Age. III. Early Grecian Chronology. IV. 
 Interpretation of the Grecian Fables. V. Religion of the Early Greeks. VI. Belief in a 
 Future State. VII. Grecian form of Government. VIII. Geographical Knowledge. IX. 
 Astronomy and Commerce. X. Dwellings and occupations of the people. XI. Manners. 
 XII. Domestic Relations. XIII. The Israelites _ Page 648666. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CHARACTER AND EXTENT OF CIVILIZATION DURING THE UNCERTAIN 
 PERIOD OF GRECIAN HISTORY. 
 
 .. Changes in Grecian Politics. II. National Councils. III. Public Festivals. IV. Grecian 
 
 Colonization. V. Progress of Arts and Literature. VI. The Eleusinian Mysteries 
 
 Page 666 689. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE GLORY AND THE FALL OF GREECE. 
 
 - Closing Period of Grecian History. II. The Persian Wars. III. Battle of Platsea. IV. Im- 
 portance of the Persian overthrow. V. The Age of Pericles. VI. Full development of the 
 democratic character of Grecian Institutions. VII. Cultivation of Rhetoric and Oratory. 
 VIII. Historians, poets, and orators. IX. The Drama. X. Causes of the downfall of 
 Athens "... Page 689-710 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE FIRST PERIOD OF ROMAN HISTORY : FROM THE FOUNDING OF ROME 
 TO THE CONQUESTS Of GREECE AND CARTHAGE. 
 
 _ Authenticity of Early Roman Hi story II. History of Regal Rome. III. Results of Criticism. 
 IV. Constitutional History of Early Rome. V. Plebeian and Patrician contests. VI. Re- 
 ligious Notions of the Romans. VII. Mode of Living, Social Condition, &c., under the 
 Kings Page 710 727.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE SECOND PERIOD OF ROMAN HISTORY : EXTENDING FROM THE CONQUESTS OF 
 GREECE AND CARTHAGE TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA. 
 
 1. Political character of the closing period of the Republic. II. Moral and Social Condition of 
 
 the people. III. Roman Literature. IV. The Aria. V. The Historical Prophecies. 
 
 Page 727 740. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 
 
 1. Power and Majesty of Rome and her Caesars II. Foreign Policy. III. Internal condition 
 of the Roman World in the Age of the Antonines. IV. The slaves of the Romans. V. Ro- 
 man citizens. VI. Taxation. VII. The Roman Army. VIII. Religion of the Romans 
 during the Empire. IX. Social Morality of the Romans. X. Outward appearances of 
 general prosperity in the Age of the Antoniues. XL The Silver Age of Roman Literature. 
 XII. Greek Literature during the Silver Age. XIII. Roman History after the Age of the 
 Antonines. XIV. Increasing causes of decline Page 740764. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 L Unity of character in ancient civilization. GREAT DIVERSITY OF THE ELEMENTS OF MODERN 
 CIVILIZATION. I. Elementary principles derived from the Roman Empire. II. The Chris- 
 tian Church. III. The Barbarian World. IV. Unsettled condition of individuals. V. Of 
 Governments and States. SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS ARISING OUT OF THE ELKMENTS ENUMER- 
 ATED. I. Impulses towards an escape from barbarism. II. Influences of the Church. III. 
 The two-fold influences of Feudalism. IV. General insurrection of the cities. V. Effects 
 of their enfranchisement. VI. Effects of the Crusades. ATTEMPTS AT CENTRALIZATION 
 OF POWER. I. Attempt at Theocratic organization. IJ. Attempts at Democratic organize 
 tion. III. Attempts at a union of the various elements of society. IV. Successful attempts 
 at Monarchical organization. V. Moral and intellectual changes in the fifteenth century. 
 VL Revival of Literature. VII. Inventions. VIII. Discoveries Page 764786. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 THE REFORMATION. I. The causes that led to the Reformation. II. Progress and extent of 
 
 the Reformation. III. Character of the Reformation. IV. Effects of the Reformation 
 
 Page 786 802. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. I. The contest that natural'y followed the Reformation. II. 
 Partial suppression of the Reformation in England, one jause of the English Revolution. 
 HI. The existence of free institutions in England, a seccnd cause. IV. Resistance to mon- 
 archy, and its overthrow, in England. V. Restoration of monarchy, and renewal of the 
 con test. VI. Concluding event of the Revolution Page 802 816. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. I. The French Revolution what is necessary to a correct under- 
 standing of it. II. Growth and character of the French Monarchy and Nobility. III. Origin 
 of the Third Estate, or Commons. IV. Character and position of the Galilean Church. V. 
 Peculiarities of early French Legislation. VI. Relations between the ruling orders and the 
 people during the century preceding the Revolution. VII. Causes of the development and 
 spread of Free Principles. VtU. Louis XVI. The First Act in the Drama of the Revo- 
 lution. Progress of the Revolution. IX. Change in its character. X. Termination, and 
 Results Page 816845.
 
 PART I. 
 ANCIENT HISTORY, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE EARLY AGES OF THE WORLD, PRIOR TO THE COMMENCE- 
 MENT OF GRECIAN HISTORY. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. THE CREATION. The earth a chaotic mass. Creation of light. Separation 
 of land and water. 2. Vegetable life. The heavenly bodies. Animal life. '.I. God's blessing 
 on his works. Creation of man. Dominion given to him. Institution of the sabbath. \. AN- 
 TEDILUVIAN HISTORY. The subjects treated of. 5. The earth immediately after the deluge. 
 The inheritance given to Noah and his children. 6. The building of Babel. [Euphrates. Geo- 
 graphical and historical account of the surrounding country.] Confusion of tongues, and dis- 
 persion of the human family. 7. Supposed directions taken by Noah and his sons. 8. EGYPT- 
 IAN HISTORY. Mis'raim, the founder of the Egyptian nation. [Egypt.] The government 
 established by him. Subverted by Menes, 2400 B. C. 9. Accounts given by Herod' otus, Jose- 
 phus, and others. [Memphis and Thebes. Description of.] Traditions relating to Menes 
 His great celebrity. [The Nile.] 10. Egyptian history from Menes to Abraham. The erection 
 of the Egyptian pyramids. [Description of t^sin.] Evidences of Egyptian civilization during 
 the time of Abraham. 11. The Shepherd Kings in Lower Egypt. Their final expulsion, 1900 
 B. C. Joseph, governor of Egypt. [Goshen.] Commencement of Grecian history. 12. ASIA- 
 TIC HISTORY. [Assyria. Nineveh.] Ashur and Nimrod. [Babylon.] The worship of Nim- 
 rod. 13. Conflicting accounts of Ninus. Assyria and Babylon during his reign, and that of his 
 successor. 14. Account of Semir' amis. Her conquests, &c. [Indus R.] The history of Assy- 
 ria subsequent to the reign of Semir' amis. 
 
 1. THE history of the world which we inhabit commences with 
 the first act of creation, when, in the language of Moses, 
 
 the earliest sacred historian, " God created the heavens I- ^o^* 1 ^ 
 and the earth." We are told that the earth was " with- 
 out form, and void" a shapeless, chaotic mass, shrouded in a man- 
 tle of darkness. But " God said, let there be light ; and there was 
 light." At the command of the same infinite power the waters rolled 
 together into their appointed places, forming seas and oceans ; and 
 the dry land appeared. 
 
 2. Then the mysteries of vegetable life began to start into being ; 
 beautiful shrubs and flowers adorned the fields, lofty trees waved in 
 the forests, and herbs and grasses covered the ground with verdure.
 
 12 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART L 
 
 The stars, those gems of evening, shone forth in the sky ; and two 
 greater lights were set in the firmament, to divide the day fr.)m the 
 night, and to be " for signs, and for seasons, and for days and for 
 years." Then the finny-tribes sported in " the waters of the seas," 
 the birds of heaven filled the air with their melody, and the earth 
 brought forth abundantly "cattle and creeping things." and "(very 
 living creature after its kind." 
 
 3. And when the Almighty architect looked upon the objects of 
 creation, he saw that " all were good," and he blessed the works of 
 his hands. Then he " created man a in his own image;" in the like 
 ness of God, "male and female created he them;" and he gave 
 them " dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the 
 air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." Thia 
 was the last great act of creation, and thus God ended the work 
 which he had made ; and having rested from his labors, he sanctified 
 a sabbath or day of rest, ever to be kept holy, in grateful remem- 
 brance of Him who made all things, and who bestows upon man all 
 the blessings which he enjoys. 
 
 4. The only history of the human family from the creation of 
 11. ANTEDI- Adam t the time of the deluge, b a period of more tha,n 
 LUVIANHIS- two thousand years, is contained in the first six chap- 
 ters of the book of Genesis, supposed to have been written 
 
 by Moses more than fourteen hundred years after the flood. The 
 fall of our first parents from a state of innocence and purity, the 
 transgression of Cain and the death of Abel, together with a gen- 
 ealogy of the patriarchs, and an account of the exceeding wicked- 
 ness of mankind, are the principal subjects treated of in the brief 
 history of the antediluvian world. 
 
 5. When Noah and his family came forth from the ark, after the 
 deluge had subsided, the earth was again a barren waste ; for the 
 waters had prevailed exceedingly, so that the hill-tops and the moun- 
 tains were covered ; and every fowl, and beast, and creeping thing 
 and every man that had been left exposed to the raging flood, had 
 been destroyed from the earth. Noah only remained alive, and 
 they that had been saved with him in the ark ; and to him, and his 
 three sons, whose names were Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the whole 
 earth was now given for an inheritance. 
 
 6. About two hundred years after the flood, we find the sons of 
 Noah and their descendants, or many of them, assembled on the 
 
 a. 5411 B. C. b, 3155 B. C.
 
 CHAP. I] EARLY AGES. 13 
 
 banks of the Euphrates, 1 in a region called the " Land of Shinar," 
 aud there beginning to build a city, together with a tower, whose 
 top, t;y boasted, should reach unto heaven. But the Lord came 
 down to see the city and the tower which the children of men in 
 their pride and impiety were building ; and he there confounded the 
 language of the workmen, that they might not understand one an- 
 other ; and thus the building of the tower, which was called Babel, 
 was abandoned, and the people were scattered abroad over the whole 
 earth. 
 
 7. It is generally supposed that Noah himself, after this event, 
 journeyed eastward, and founded the empire of China ; that Shem 
 was the father of the nations of Southern Asia ; that Ham peopled 
 Egypt ; and that the descendants of Japheth migrated westward 
 and settled in the countries of Europe, or, as they are called in 
 Scripture, the " Isles of the Gentiles." 
 
 8. Soon after the dispersion of mankind from Babel, it is supposed 
 that Mis' raim, one of the sons of Ham, journeyed into 
 
 Egypt* where he became the founder of the most ancient 1] 
 and renowned nation of antiquity. The government es- 
 tablished by him is believed to have been that of an aristocratic 
 
 1. The Euphrates, the most considerable river of Western Asia, has its sources in the table 
 lauds of Armenia, about ninety miles from the south-eastern borders of the Black Sea. The 
 sources of the Tigris are in the same region, but farther south. The general direction of both 
 rivers is south-east, to their entrance into the head of the Persian Gulf. (See Map, p. 15.) So 
 late as the age of Alexander the Great, each of these rivers preserved a separate course to the 
 sea, but not long after they became united about eighty miles from their mouth, from which 
 point they have ever since continued to flow in a single stream. Both rivers are navigable a 
 considerable distance, both have their regular inundations ; rising twice a year first in De- 
 cember, in consequence of the autumnal rains; and next from March till June, owing to the 
 melting of the mountain snows. The Scriptures place the Garden of Eden on the banks of the 
 Euphrates, but the exact site is unknown. 
 
 We learn that soou after the deluge, the country in the vicinity of the two rivers Tigris and 
 Euphrates, where stood the tower of Babel, was known as the Land, of Sliinar : afterwards the 
 empire of Assyria or Babylon flourished here ; and still later, the country between the two 
 rivers was called by the ancient Greeks, Mesopotamia, a compound of two Greek words, 
 (mcsos and potamos,) signifying "between the rivers." In ancient times the banks of both 
 rivers were studded with cities of the first rank. On the eastern bank of the Tigris stood 
 Nineveh ; and on both sides of the Euphrates stood the mighty Babylon, " the glory oi king- 
 doms," and " the beauty of the Chaldee's excellency." Lower Mesopotamia, both above and 
 below Babylon, was anciently intersected by canals in every direction, many of which can still 
 be traced; and some of them could easily be restored to their original condition. (See 
 Map, p. 15.) 
 
 2. Ancient EGYPT, called by the Hebrews Mis' raim, may be divided into two principal por- 
 tions ; Upper or Southern Egypt, of which Thebes was the capital, and Lower Egypt, whose 
 capital was Memphis. That portion of Lower Egypt embraced within the mouths or outlets of 
 the Nile, the Greeks afterwards called the Delta, from its resemblance to the form of the 
 fjreek letter of that name. (A) Ancient Egypt probably embraced all of the present Nubia, 
 and perhaps a part of Abyssinia. Modern Egypt is bounded on the north by the Mediterra-
 
 14 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART i 
 
 priesthood, whcse members were the patrons of the arts and sciences ; 
 and it is supposed that the nation was divided into three distinct 
 classes, the priests, the military, and the people ; the two former 
 holding the latter and most numerous body .in subjection. After 
 this government had existed nearly two centuries, under rulers whose 
 names have perished, Mencs, a military chieftain, is supposed to 
 have subverted the ancient sacerdotal despotism, and to have estab- 
 lished th first civil monarchy, about 2400 years before the Christian 
 era. Menes was the first Pharaoh, a name common to all the kings 
 of Egypt. 
 
 9. Upon the authority of Herod' otus* and Josephus, 9 to the first 
 king, Menes, is attributed the founding of Memphis, 8 probably the 
 most ancient city in Egypt. Other writers ascribe to him the build- 
 ing of Thebes 4 also ; but some suppose that Thebes was built many 
 
 lean, on the east by the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea, on the south by Nubia, and on the 
 west by the Great Desert and the province of Barca. 
 
 The cultivated portion of Egypt, embraced mostly within a narrow valley of from five to 
 twenty miles in width, is indebted wholly to the annual inundations of the Nile for its fertility ; 
 and without them, would soon become a barren waste. The river begins to swell, in its higher 
 parts, in April ; but at the Delta no increase occurs until the beginning of June. Its greatest 
 height there is in September, when the Delta is almost entirely under water. By the end of 
 November the waters leave the land altogether, having deposited a rich alluvium. Then the 
 Egyptian spring commences, at a season corresponding to our winter, when the whole country, 
 covered with a vivid green, bears the aspect of a fruitful garden. (Map, p. 15.) 
 
 1. J/erod' otus the earliest of the Greek historians: born 484 B. C. 
 
 2. Josepkus a celebrated Jewish historian : born at Jerusalem, A. D. 37. 
 
 3. Memphis, a famous city of Egypt, whose origin dates beyond the period of authentic h- 
 tory, is supposed to have stood on the western bank of the Nile, about fifteen miles south from 
 the apex of the Delta the point whence the waters of the river diverge to enter the sea by 
 different channels. But few relics of its magnificence now occupy the ground where the city 
 once stood, the materials having been mostly removed for the building of modern edifices. At 
 the time of our Saviour, Memphis was the second city in Egypt, and next in importance to 
 Alexandria, the capital ; but its decay had already begun. Even in the twelfth century of the 
 Christian era, after the lapse of four thousand years from its origin, it is described by an Orien- 
 tal writer as containing "works so wonderful that they confound oven a reflecting mind, and 
 such as the most eloquent would not be able to describe." (Map, p. 15.) 
 
 4. The ruins of Thebes, " the capital of a by-gone world," are situated in the narrow valley 
 of the Nile, in Upper Egypt, extending about seven miles along both banks of the river. Here 
 are still to be seen magnificent ruins of temples, palaces, colossal statues, obelisks, and tombs, 
 which attest the exceeding wealth and power of the early Egyptians. The city is supposed to 
 have attained its greatest splendor about fifteen hundred years before the Christian era. On 
 the east side of the river the principal ruins are those of Carnac and Luxor, about a mile and a 
 half apart. Among the former are the remains of a temple dedicated to Ammon, the Jupiter 
 of the Egyptians, covering more than nine acres of ground. A large portion of this stupendous 
 structure is still standing. The principal front to this building is 368 feet in length, and 148 feet 
 in height, with a door-way in the middle 64 feet high. One of the halls in this vast building 
 covers an area of more than an acre and a quarter ; and its roof, consisting of enormous slabs 
 of stone, has been supported by 134 huge columns. The roof of what is supposed to have been 
 the sanctuary, or place from which the oracles were delivered, is composed of three blocks of 
 granite, painted with clusters of gilt stars on a blue ground. The entrance to this room wa 
 marked by four noble obelisks, each 70 feet high, three of which are now standing. At L'lxor
 
 CHAP. I.j 
 
 EARLY AGES. 
 
 15 
 
 centuries later. Menes appears to have been occupied, during most 
 of his reign, in wars with foreign nations to us unknown. According 
 to numerous traditions, recorded in later ages, he also cultivated the 
 arts of peace ; he protected religion and the priesthood, and erected 
 temples ; he built walls of defence on the frontier of his kingdom 
 and he dug numerous canals, and constructed dikes, both to draw off 
 
 MAP ILLUSTRATIVE OF EARLY HISTORY. 
 
 are to be seen the remains of a magnificent palace, about 800 feet in length by 200 in width. 
 On each side of the doorway is a colossal statue, measuring 44 feet from the ground. Fronting 
 these statues were two obelisks, each formed of a single block of red granite, 80 feet in height, 
 and beautifully sculptured. A few years ago one of these obelisks was taken down, and con- 
 veyed, at great expense, to the city of Paris, where it has been erected in the Place de la Con- 
 corde. Among the ruins on the west side of the river, at Medinet Abou, are two sitting colossal 
 figures, each about 50 feet in height, supported by pedestals of corresponding dimensions. On 
 the same sid of the river, in the mountain-range that skirts the valley, and westward of the 
 ruins, are the famous catacombs, or burial-places of the ancient inhabitarts, excavated in the 
 lolid rock. (Map, p. 15 .)
 
 16 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAST L 
 
 the waters of the Nile 1 for enriching the cultivated lands, and to 
 prevent inundations. His name is common in ancient records, while 
 many subsequent monarchs of Egypt have been forgotten. Monu- 
 ments still exist which attest the veneration in which he was held 
 by his posterity. 
 
 10. From the time of Menes until about the 21st century before 
 Christ, the period when Abraham is supposed to have visited Egypt, 1 
 little is known of Egyptian history. It appears, however, from 
 hieroglyphic inscriptions, first interpreted in the present century, and 
 corroborated by traditions and some vague historic records, that the 
 greatest Egyptian pyramids" were erected three or four hundred 
 years before the time of Abraham, and eight or nine hundred years 
 before the era of Moses, showing a truly astonishing degree of 
 power and grandeur attained by the Egyptian monarchy more than 
 four thousand years ago. When Abraham visited Egypt he was re- 
 
 1. The JVtfe, a large river of eastern Africa, is formed by the junction of the White River and 
 the Blue River in the country of Sennaar, whence the united stream flows northward, in a very 
 winding course, through Nubia and Egypt, and enters the Mediterranean through two mouths, 
 those of Rosetta and Damietta, the former or most westerly of which has a width of about 1800 
 feet ; and the latter of about 900. The Rosetta channel has a depth of about five feet in the dry 
 season, and the Damietta channel of seven or eight feet when the river is lowest. Formerly the 
 Nile entered the sea by seven different channels, several of which still occasionally serve for 
 canals, and purposes of irrigation. During the last thirteen hundred miles of its course, the 
 Nile receives no tributary on either side. The White river, generally regarded as the true Nile, 
 about whose source no satisfactory knowledge has yet been obtained, is supposed to have its 
 rise in the highlands of Central Africa, north of the Equator. ( Map, p. 15.) 
 
 2. The pyramids of Egypt are vast artificial structures, most of them of stone, scattered a' 
 irregular intervals along the western valley of the Nile from Meroe, (Mer-o-we) in modern 
 Nubia, to the. site of ancient Memphis near Cairo. (Ki-ro.) The largest, best known, and most 
 celebrated, are the three pyramids of Ghizeh, situated on a platform of rock about 150 feet 
 above the level of the surrounding desert, near the ruins of Memphis, seven or eight miles 
 south-west from Cairo. The largest of these, the famous pyramid of Cheops, is a gigantic struc- 
 ture, the base of which covers a surface of about eleven acres. The sides of the base corre- 
 spond in direction with the four cardinal points, and each measures, at the foundation, 746 feet. 
 The perpendicular height is about 480 feet, which is 43 feet 9 inches higher than St. Peters at 
 Rome, the loftiest edifice of modern times. This huge fabric consists of two hundred and six 
 layers of vast blocks of stone, rising above each other in the form of steps, the thickness of 
 which diminishes as the height of the pyramid increases, the lower layers being nearly five feet 
 in thickness, and the upper ones about eighteen inches. The summit of the pyramid appears 
 to have been, originally, a level platform, sixteen or eighteen feet square. Within this pyramid 
 several chambers have been discovered, lined with immense slabs of granite, which must ha"ve 
 been conveyed thither from a great distance up the Nile. The second pyramid at Ghizeh Is 
 coated over with polished stone 140 feet downwards from the summit, thereby removing the 
 inequalities occasioned by the steps, and rendering the surface smooth and uniform. Herod' o- 
 tus states, from information derived from the Egyptian priests, that one hundred thousand men 
 were employed twenty years in constructing the great pyramid of Ghizeh, and that ten years 
 had been spent, previously, in quarrying the stones and conveying them to the place. The re- 
 maining pyramids of Egypt correspond, in their general character, with the one described, with 
 the exception that several of them are constructed of sun-burnt brick. No reasonable douo 
 DOW exists that the pyramids were designed as the burial places of kings. 
 
 a. 2077 b. C.
 
 CHAP. I] EARLY AGES. 17 
 
 ceived with the hospitality and kindness becoming a civilized nation ; 
 and when he left Egypt, to return to his own country, the ruling 
 monarch dismissed him and all his people, " rich in cattle, in silver, 
 and in gold." 
 
 1 1. Nearly a hundred years before the time of Abraham's visit to 
 Egypt, Lower Egypt had been invaded and subdued" by the Hyc' sos, 
 or Shepherd Kings, a roving people from the eastern shores of the 
 Mediterranean, probably the same that were known, at a later 
 period, in Sacred history, as the Philistines, and still later as the 
 Phoenicians. Kings of this race continued to rule over Lower Egypt 
 during a period of 260 years, but they were finally expelled, 1 " and 
 driven back to their original seats in Asia. During their dominion, 
 Upper Egypt, \fcth Thebes its capital, appears to have remained 
 under the government of the native Egyptians. A few years after 
 the expulsion of the Shepherd Kings, Joseph was appointed' governor 
 or regent of Egypt, under one of the Pharaohs ; and the family of 
 Jacob was settled d in the land of Goshen. 1 It was during the resi- 
 dence of the Israelites in Egypt that we date the commencement of 
 Grecian history, with the supposed founding of Argos by In' achus, 
 1856 years before the Christian era. 
 
 12. During the early period of Egyptian history which we have 
 described, kingdoms arose and mighty cities were found- 
 ed in those regions of Asia first peopled by the imme- 
 
 diate descendants of Noah. After the dispersion of 
 mankind from Babel, Ashur, one of the sons of Shem, remained in 
 the vicinity of that place ; and by many he is regarded as the 
 founder of the Assyrian empire, 2 and the builder of Nineveh. 3 But 
 
 1. "The land of Goshen lay along the most easterly branch of the Nile, and on the east side 
 of it; forit is evident that at the time of the Exode the Israelites did not cross the Nile. (Hole's 
 Analysis of Chronology, i. 374.) "The 'land of Goshen' was between Egypt and Canaan, not 
 far from the Isthmus of Suez, on the eastern side of the Nile." (See .Map, p. 15.) (Cockayne't 
 Hist, of the Jews, p. 7.) 
 
 2. The early province or kingdom of ASSYRIA is usually considered as having been on the 
 eastern bank of the river Tigris, having Nineveh for its capital. But it is probable that both 
 Nineveh and Babylon belonged to the early Assyrian empire, and that these two cities were at 
 times the capitals of separate monarchies, and at times united under one government, whose 
 territories were ever changing by conquest, and by alliances with surrounding tribes or naiion*. 
 
 3. The city of Nineveh is supposed to have stood on the east bank of the Tigris, opposite the 
 modern city of Mosul. (Sec .Map, p. 15.) Its site was probably identical with that of the pre- 
 eent small village of Nunia, and what is called the "tomb of Jonah ;" which are surrounded by 
 vast heaps of ruins, and vestiges of mounds, from which bricks and pieces of gypsum are dug 
 cut, with inscriptions closely resembling those found among the ruins of Babylon. 
 
 Of the early history of Nineveh little is known. Some early writer* describe it as larger than 
 Babylon; but little dependence can be placed on their statements. It is believed, ho wever, 
 a 2159 B. C. b. 1900 B C. c. ItfK B. C. d. 1863 B. C. 
 
 2
 
 18 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAKT L 
 
 others 1 ascribe this honor to Nimrod, a grandson of Ham, who, as they 
 suppose, having obtained possession of the provinces of Ashur, built 
 Nineveh, and encompassing Babel with walls, and rebuilding the desert- 
 ed city, made it the capital of his empire, under the name of Babylon, 
 
 that the walls included, besides the buildings of the city, a large extent of well-cultivated gar- 
 dens and pasture grounds. In the ninth century before Christ, it was described by the prophet 
 Jonah as "an exceeding great city of three days' journey," and as containing "more than six 
 score thousand persons that could not distinguish between their right hand and their left." It 
 is generally believed that the expression here used denoted children, and that the entire popu- 
 lation of the city numbered seven or eight hundred thousand souls. 
 
 Nineveh was a city of great commercial importance. The prophet Nahum thus addresses 
 her: "Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars of heaven." (iii. 16.) Nineveh was 
 besieged and taken by Arbaces the Mede, in the eighth century before Christ ; and in the year 
 612 it fell into the hands of Ahasuerus, or Cyaxares, king of Media, who took great "spoil of 
 silver and gold, and none end of the store and glory, out of all her pleaftnt furniture," making 
 her "empty, ami void, and waste." (Map, p. 15.) 
 
 1. According to our English Bible (Genesis, x. 11), ".tf.sAitr went forth out of the land of Shi- 
 nar (Babylon) and builded Nineveh." But by many this reading is supposed to be a wrong 
 translation, and that the passage should read, " From that land he (Nimrod) went forth into 
 Ashur, (the name of a province,) and built Nineveh." ("De terra ilia egressus est Assur et 
 sedificavit Nineveh." (See Anthon's Classical Dictionary, article Assyria. See, also, the subject 
 examined in Halo's Analysis of Chronology, i. 450-1.) 
 
 2. Ancient Babyfvn, once the greatest, most magnificent, and most powerful city of the world, 
 stood on both sides of the river Euphrates, about 350 miles from the entrance of that stream 
 into the Persian Gulf. The building of B;;bel was probably the commencement of the city, but 
 it is supposed to have attained its greatest glory during the reign of the Assyrian queen, Semir'- 
 amis. Different writers give different acccounts of the extent of this city. The Greek historian 
 Herod' otus, who visited it in the fourth century before Christ, while its walls were still standing 
 and much of its early magnificence remaining, described it as a perfect square, the walls of 
 each side being 120 furlongs, or fifteen miles in length. According to this computation the city 
 embraced an area of 225 square miles. But Dioddrus reduces the supposed area lo 72 square 
 miles ; equal, however, to three and a half times the area of London, with all its suburbs. 
 Some writers have supposed that the city contained a population of at least five millions of 
 people. Others have reduced this estimate to one million. It is highly improbable that the 
 whole of the immense area inclosed by the walls was filled with the buildings of a compact 
 city. 
 
 The walls of Babylon, which were built of large bricks cemented with bitumen, are said to 
 have been 350 feet high, and 87 feet in thickness, flanked with lofty towers, and pierced by 100 
 gates of brass. The two portions of the city, on each side of the Euphrates, were connected by 
 a bridge of stone, which rested on arches of the same material. The temple of Jupiter Belus, 
 supposed to have been the tower of Babel, is described by Herod' otus as an immense structure, 
 square at the base, and rising, in eight distinct stories, to the height of nearly COO feet. Herod'- 
 otus says that when he visited Babylon the brazen gates of this temple were still to be seen, 
 and that in the upper story there was a couch magnificently adorned, and near it a table of solid 
 gold. Herod' otus also mentions a statue of gold twelve cubits high, supposed to have been 
 the "golden image" set up by Nebuchadnezzar. The site of this temple has been identified a* 
 that of the ruins now called by the Arabs the " Birs N imroud," or Tower of Nimrod. 
 
 Later writers than Herod' otus speak of a tunnel under the Euphrates subterranean banquet- 
 ing rooms of brass and hanging gardens elevated three hundred feet above the city ; but as 
 Herod' otus is silent on these points, serious doubts have been entertained of the existence of 
 these structures. 
 
 Nothing now remains of the buildings of ancient Rabylon but immense and shapeless masses 
 of ruins; their sites being partly occupied by the modern and meanly built town of Hillah, on 
 the western bank of the Euphrates. This town, surrounded by m;id walls, contains a mixeu 
 Arabian and Jewish population of six or seven thousand souls. (,W.tp, p. 15.)
 
 CHAP. I.] EARLY AGES. 19 
 
 about GOO years after the deluge, and 2555 years before the Chris- 
 tian era. After his death, Nimrod was deified for his great actions, 
 and called Belus : and it is supposed that the tower of Babel, rising 
 high above the walls of Babylon, but still in an unfinished state, was 
 consecrated to his worship. 
 
 13. While some believe that the monarch Ninus was the son of 
 Nimrod, and that Assyria and Babylon formed one united empire 
 under the immediate successors of the first founder ; others regard 
 Ninus as an Assyrian prince, who, by conquering Babylon, united 
 the hitherto separate empires, more than four hundred years after 
 the reign of Nimrod ; while others still regard Ninus as only a per- 
 sonification of Nineveh-* During the reign of Ninus, and also 
 during that of his supposed queen and successor, Semir'amis, the 
 boundaries of the united Assyrian and Babylonian empires are said 
 to have been greatly enlarged by conquest ; but the accounts that 
 are given of these events are evidently so exaggerated, that little re- 
 liance can be placed upon them. 
 
 14. Semir'amis, who was raised from an humble station to be- 
 come the queen of Ninus, is described as a woman of uncommon 
 courage and masculine character, the main object of whose ambition 
 was to immortalize her name by the greatness of her exploits. Her 
 conquests are said to have embraced nearly all the then known world, 
 extending as far as Central Africa on the one hand, and as far as 
 the Indus, 1 in Asia, on the other. She is said to have raised, at one 
 time, an army of more than three millions of men, and to have em- 
 ployed two millions of workmen in adorning Babylon statements 
 wholly inconsistent with the current opinion of the sparse population 
 of the world at this early period. After the reign of Semir'amis, 
 which is supposed to have been during the time of the sojourn of 
 the Israelites in Egypt, little is known of the history of Assyria for 
 more than thirty generations. 
 
 1. The river Indus, or Sinde, rises in the Himmaleh mountains, and running in a south-west- 
 eriy direction enters the Arabian Sea near the western extremity of Hindostan. 
 a. Niebuhr'e Ancient Hist. i. 55.
 
 20 ANCIENT HISTORY. PAET I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE FABULOUS AND LEGENDARY PERIOD OF GRECIA.N 
 HISTORY : 
 
 ENDING WITH THE CLOSE OF THE TROJAN WAR, 1183 B C. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. Extent of Ancient Greece. Of Modern Greece. The most ancient name of 
 (he country. 2. The two general divisions of Modern Greece. Extent of Northern Greece. 
 Of the Morea. Whole area of the country so renowned in history. 3. The general surface of 
 the country. Its fertility. 4. Mountains of Greece. Rivers. Climate. The seasons. Scenery. 
 Classical associations. 
 
 5. GRECIAN MYTHOLOGY, the proper introduction to Grecian history. 6. Chaos, Earth, and 
 Fleaven. The offspring of Earth and U' ranus. [U' ranus ; the Titans : the Cycl&pes.] 7. U' rauus 
 is dethroned, and is succeeded by Sat' urn. [The Furies: the Giants: and the Melian Nymphs. 
 Venus. Sat' urn. Jupiter. Nep'tune. Plu'.o.] 8. War of the Titans against Sat' urn. War 
 of the Giants with Jupiter. The result. New dynasty of the gods. 9. The wives of Jupiter. 
 [Juno.] His offspring. [Mer'cury. Mars. Apol'lo. Vul'can. Diana. Miner' va.] Other 
 celestial divinities. [Ceres. Ves'ta.] 10. Other deities not included among the celestials. 
 [Bac'chus. Iris. Hebe. The Muses. The Fates. The Graces.] Monsters. [Harpies. Gor'- 
 gons.] Rebellions against Jupiter. [Olym'pus.] 11. Numbers, and character, of the legends 
 of the gods. Vulgar belief, and philosophical explanations of them. 
 
 12. EARLIEST INHABITANTS OF GREECE. The Pelas' gians. Tribes included under this 
 name. 13. Character and civilization of the Pelas' gians. [Cyclopean structures. Asia 
 Minor.] 14. FOREIGN SETTLERS IN GREECE. Reputed founding of Ar'gos. [Ar' gos. Ar'- 
 iolis. Oceanus. In' achus.] The accounts of the early Grecian settlements not reliable. 15. 
 The founding of Athens. [At' tica. Ogy' ges.] The elements of Grecian civilization attributed 
 to Cecrops. The story of Cecrops doubtless fabulous. 16. Legend of the contest between Min- 
 IT' va and Nep' tune. 17. Cran' aus and Amphic' tyon. Dan' aus and Cad' mus. [Bteotia. 
 rhebes.}- 18. General character of the accounts of foreign settlers in Greece. Value of these tra- 
 ditions. The probable truth in relation to them, which accounts for the intcrmixture of foreign 
 with Grecian mythology. [^Egean Sea.] 
 
 19. The HELLENES appear in Thessaly, about 1384 B. C., and become the ruling class among 
 the Grecians. 20. Hellen the son of Deucalion. The several Grecian tribes. The vEolian tribe. 
 21. The HEROIC AGE. Our knowledge of Grecian history during this period. Character and 
 value of the Heroic legends. The most important of them. [1st. Hercules. 2d. Theseus. 3d. 
 Argonaiitic expedition. 4th. Theban and Ar'golic war.] 22. The Argonautic expedition 
 thought the most important. Probably a poetic fiction. [Samothrace. Euxine Sea.] Proba- 
 bility of naval expeditions at this early period, and their results. [Minos. Crete ] 23. Opecr 
 ing of the Trojan war. Its alleged causes. [Troy. Lacedae'mon.] 24. Paris, the flight of 
 Helen, the war which followed. 25. Remarks on the supposed reality of the war. [The fable 
 of Helen.] 2(5. What kind oi truth is to be extracted from Homer's account. 
 
 COTKMPORARY HISTORY. 1. Our limited knowledge of cotemporary history during this 
 period. Rome. Europe. Central Western Asia. Egyptian History. 2. The conquests of 
 Sesos' tris. [Libya. Ethidpia. The Ganges. Thracians and Scythians.] The columns erect- 
 ed by Sesos' tris. 3. Statues of Sesostris at Ipsam' boul. Historical sculptures. 4. Remarks 
 on the evidences of the existence of this conqueror. The close of his reign. Subsequent 
 Egyptian history. 5. The Israelites at the period of the commencement of Grecian history. 
 Their situation after the death of J sseph. Their exodus from Egypt, 1648 B. C. 6. Wander- 
 ings in the wilderness Passage of '.he Jordan. [Arabia. Jordan. Palestine.] Death of
 
 CHAP. H.J GRECIAN HISTORY. 21 
 
 Moses. Israel during the time of Joshua and the elders. 7. Israel ruled by judges until the 
 time of Saul. The Israelites frequently apostatize to idolatry. [Moabites. Canaaniteg.] 8. 
 Their deli veraiicj- from the Mid'ianites and Am'alekites. [Localities of these tribes.] 9. De- 
 liverance from the Philistines and Am' monites. [Localities of these tribes.] Samson, Eli, and 
 Samuel. Saul anointed king over Israel, 1110 13. C. 10. Closing remarks. 
 
 1. GREECE, which is the Roman name of the country whose his- 
 i OEOGRAPHI- torv we next P ror;ee( l to narrate, but which was called 
 
 CAL DEscEip- by the natives Hel' las, denoting the country of the 
 [OX Hellenes, comprised, in its most flourishing period, 
 nearly the whole of the great eastern peninsula of southern Europe 
 extending north to the northern extremity of the waters of the 
 Grecian Archipelago. Modern Greece, however, has a less extent 
 on the north, as Thes' saly, Epirus, and Macedonia have been taken 
 from it, and annexed to the Turkish empire. The area of Modern 
 Greece is less than that of Portugal ; but owing to the irregularities 
 of its shores, its range of seacoast is greater than that of the whole 
 of Spain. The most ancient name by which Greece was known to 
 other nations was Ionia, a term which Josephus derives from Ja- 
 van, the son of Japhet, and grandson of Noah : although the Greeks 
 themselves applied the term Tones only to the descendants of the 
 fabulous /' on, son of Xuthus. 
 
 2. Modern Greece is divided into two principal portions : North- 
 ern Greece or Hel' las, and Southern Greece, or Morea anciently 
 called Peloponnesus. The former includes the country of the an- 
 cient Grecian States, Aearnania, ^Etolia, Locris, Phocis, Doris, 
 Boeotia, Euboe' a, and At' tica ; and the latter, the Peloponnesian 
 States of E' lis, Achaia, Cor' inth, Ar' golis, Laconia, and Messenia; 
 whose localities may be learned from the accompanying map. The 
 greatest length of the northern portion, which is from north-west to 
 south-east, is about two hundred miles, with an average width of 
 fifty miles. The greatest length of the Morea, which is from north 
 to south, is about one hundred and forty miles. The whole area of 
 the country so renowned in history under the name of Greece or 
 Hel' las, is only about twenty thousand square miles, which is less 
 than half the area of the State of Pennsylvania. 
 
 3. The general surface of Greece is mountainous ; and almost the 
 only fertile spots are the numerous and usually narrow plains along 
 the sea-shore and the banks of rivers, or, as in several places, large 
 basins, which apparently once formed the beds of mountain lakes. 
 The largest tracts of level country are in western Hel' las, and along 
 the northern and north-western shores of the Morea.
 
 22 AXCIEXT HISTORY. [PAKT L 
 
 4. The mountains of Greece are of the Alpine character, and are 
 remarkable for their numerous grottos and caverns. Their abrupt 
 summits never rise to the regions of perpetual snow. There are no 
 navigable rivers in Greece, but this want is obviated by the numerous 
 gulfs and inlets of the sea, which indent the coast on every side, and 
 thus furnish unusual facilities to commerce, while they add to the 
 variety and beauty of the scenery. The climate of Greece is for the 
 inost part healthy, except in the low and marshy tracts around the 
 shores and lakes. The winters are short. Spring and autumn are 
 rainy seasons, when many parts of the country are inundated ; but 
 during the whole summer, which comprises half the year, a cloud in 
 the sky is rare in several parts of the country. Grecian scenery is 
 unsurpassed in romantic wildness and beauty ; but our deepest inter- 
 est in the country arises from its classical associations, and the ruins 
 of ancient art and splendor scattered over it. 
 
 5. As the Greeks, in common with the Egyptians and other East- 
 ern nations, placed the reign of the gods anterior to the 
 
 race of mortals, therefore Grecian mythology 1 forms the MiTHOLocre* 
 most appropriate introduction to Grecian history. 
 
 6. According to Grecian philosophy, first in the order of time 
 came Chiios, a heterogeneous mass containing all the seeds of nature ; 
 then " broad-breasted Earth," the mother of the gods, who produced 
 U' ranus, or Heaven, the mountains, and the barren and billowy sea. 
 Then Earth married U' ranus 2 or Heaven, and from this union came 
 a numerous and powerful brood, the Titans 3 and the Cyclopes, 4 and 
 the gods of the wintry season, Kot' tos, Briareus, and Gy ' ges, who 
 had each a hundred hands, supposed to be personifications of the 
 hail, the rain, and the snow. 
 
 1. MYTHOLOGY, from two Greek words signifying a " fable" and a "discourse," is a system 
 of myths, or fabulous opinions and doctrines respecting the deities which heathen nations 
 have supposed to preside over the world, or to influence its affairs. 
 
 2. U' ranus, from a Greek word signify ing "heaven," or "sky," was the most ancient of all 
 the gods. 
 
 3. The Titans were six males Oceanus, Coios, Crios, Hyperion, Japetus, and Kronos, or 
 Sat' urn, and six females, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemos' yne, Phoe' be, and Tethys. Oceanus, 
 or the Ocean, espoused his sisterTethys, and their children were the rivers of the earth, and the 
 three thousand Oceanides or Ocean-nymphs. Hyperion married his sister Theia, by whom he 
 had Aurora, or the morning, and also the sun and moon. 
 
 4. The Cyclopes were a race of gigantic size, having but one eye, and that placed in the centre 
 of the forehead. According to some accounts there were many of this race, but according to 
 the poet Hesiod, the principal authority in Grecian mythology, they were only three in num- 
 ber, Krori tes, Ster' opes, and Ar' ges, words which signify in the Greek, Thunder, Lightning, 
 and the rapid Flame. The poets converted them into smiths the assistants of the fire-god 
 Vulcan. The Cyclopes were probably personifications of the energies of the "powers of the 
 air."
 
 HEATHEN DIITILS.
 
 24 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART L 
 
 7. The Titans made war upon their father, who was wounded by 
 Sat' urn, 1 the youngest and bravest of his sons. From the drops of 
 blood which flowed from the wound and fell upon the earth, sprung 
 the Furies, 2 the Giants, 3 and the Melian nymphs ;* and from those 
 which fell into the sea, sprung Venus, 6 the goddess of love and beauty. 
 U'ranus or Heaven being dethroned, Sat' urn, by the consent of his 
 brethren, was permitted to reign in his stead, on condition that he 
 would destroy all his male children : but Rliea his wife concealed 
 from him the birth of Jupiter, 6 Nep' tune, 7 and Pluto. 8 
 
 1. Sat' urn, the youngest but most powerful of the Titans, called by the Greeks, Kronos, a 
 word signifying -Time," is generally represented as an old man, bent by age and infirmity, 
 holding a scythe in his right hand, together with a serpent that bites its own tail, which is an 
 emblem of time, and of the revolution of the year. In his left hand he has a child which h 
 raises up as if to devour it as lime devours all things. 
 
 When Sat' urn was banished by his son Jupiter, he is said to have fled to Italy, where he 
 employed himself in civilizing the barbarous manners of the people. His reign there was so 
 beneficent and virtuous that mankind have called it the golden age. According to Hesiod, 
 Sat' urn ruled over the Isles of the Blessed, at the end of the earth, by the " deep eddying 
 ocean." 
 
 2. The Furies were three goddesses, whose names signified the "Unceasing," the "Envier," 
 and the " Blood-avenger." They are usualy represented with looks full of terror, each brand- 
 ishing a torch in one hand and a scourge of snakes in the other. They torment guilty con- 
 sciences, and punish the crimes of bad men. 
 
 3. The Giants are represented as of uncommon stature, with strength proportioned to their 
 gigantic size. The war of the Titans against Sat' urn, and that of the Giants against Jupiter, are 
 very celebrated in mythology. It is believed that the Giants were nothing more than the ener- 
 gies of nature personified, and that the war with Jupiter is an allegorical representation of some 
 tremendous convulsion of nature in early times. 
 
 4. In Grecian mythology, all the regions of earth and water were peopled with beautiful fe- 
 male forms called nymphs, divided into various orders according to the place of their abode. 
 The Melian nymphs were those which watched over gardens and flocks. 
 
 5. Venus, the most beautiful of all the goddesses, is sometimes represented as rising out of 
 the sea, and wringing her locks, sometimes drawn in a sea-shell by Tritons sea-deities that 
 were half fish and hay human and sometimes in a chariot drawn by swans. Swans, doves, 
 anrl sparrows, were sacred to her. Her favorite plants were the rose and the myrtle. 
 
 6. Jupiter, called the "father of men and gods," is placed at the head of the entire system of 
 the universe. He is supreme over all: earthly monarchs derive their authority from him, and 
 his will is fate. He is generally represented as majestic in appearance, seated on a throne, with 
 a sceptre in one hand, and thunderbolts in the other. The eagle, which is sacred to him, it 
 standing by his side. Regarding Jupiter as the surrounding ether, or atmosphere, the numer- 
 ous fables of thii monarch of the gods may be considered allegories which typify the great gen- 
 erative power of the universe, displaying itself in a variety of ways, and under the greatest 
 diversity of forms. 
 
 7. Jfep'tunf, the "Earth-shaker," and ruler of the sea, is second only to Jupiter in powei 
 He is represented, like Jupiter, of a serene and majestic aspect, seated in a chariot made of a 
 shell, bearing a trident in his right hand, and drawn by dolphins and sea-horses ; while the 
 tritocs, nymphs, and other sea-monsters, gambol around him. 
 
 8. PHito, called also Hades and Or' cus, the god of the lower world, is represented as a man 
 of a stern aspect, seated on a throne of sulphur, from beneath which flow the rivers Lethe or 
 Oblivion, Phleg' ethon, Cocy' tus, and Ach' eron. In one hand he holds a bident, or sceptre 
 with two forks, and in the other the keys of hell. His queen, Pros' erpine, is sometimes seated 
 by him. He is described by the poets as a being inexorable and deaf to s-< pplication, and aa 

 
 CHAP. H.J GRECIAN HISTORY. 25 
 
 8. Tbj Titans, informed that Sat' urn had saved his children, 
 made war upon him and dethroned him ; but he was restored by his 
 son Jupiter. Yet the latter afterwards conspired against his father, 
 and after a long war with him and his giant progeny, which lasted 
 ten full years, and in which all the gods took part, he drove Sat' urn 
 from the kingdom, and then divided, between himself and his 
 brothers Nep'tune and Pluto, the dominion of the universe, taking 
 heaven as his own portion, and assigning the sea to Nep'tune, and 
 to Pluto the lower regions, the abodes of the dead. With Jupiter 
 and his brethren begins a new dynasty of the gods, being those, for 
 the most part, whom the Greeks recognised and worshipped. 
 
 9. Jupiter had several wives, both goddesses and mortals, but 
 last of all he married his sister Juno, 1 who maintained, permanently, 
 the dignity of queen of the gods. The offspring of Jupiter were 
 numerous, comprising both celestial and terrestrial divinities. The 
 most noted of the former were Mer' cury, 2 Mars, 3 Apol' lo, 4 Vul' can,* 
 
 object of aversion and hatred to both gods and men. From his realms there is no return, and 
 all mankind, sooner or later, are sure to be gathered into his kingdom. 
 
 As none of the goddesses would marry the stern and gloomy god, he seized Pros' erpine, ths 
 daughter of Ceres, while she was gathering flowers, and opening a passage through the earth, 
 carried her to his abode, and made her queen of his dominions. 
 
 1. Juno, a goddess of a dignified and matronly air, but haughty, jealous, and inexorable, is 
 represented sometimes as seated on a throne, holding in one hand a pomegranate, and in the 
 other a golden sceptre, with a cuckoo on its top ; and at others, as drawn in a chariot by pea- 
 cocks, and attended by I' ris, the goddess of the rainbow. 
 
 The many quarrels attributed to Jupiter and Juno, are supposed to be physical allegories 
 Jupiter representing the ether, or upper regions of the air, and Juno the lower strata hence 
 their quarrels are the storms that pass over the earth : and the capricious and quick-changing 
 temper of the spouse of Jove, is typical of the ever-varying changes that disturb our atmos- 
 phere. 
 
 2. Mer' enry, the confident, messenger, interpreter, and ambassador of the gods, was himself 
 the god of eloquence, and the patron of orators, merchants, thieves and robbers, travellers and 
 shepherds. He is said to have invented the lyre, letters, commerce, and gymnastic exercises. 
 His thieving exploits are celebrated. He is usually represented with a cloak neatly arranged 
 on his person, having a winged cap on his head, and winged sandals on his feet. In his hand 
 he bears his wand or staff, with wings at its extremity, and two serpents twined about it. 
 
 3. Mars, the god of war, was of huge size and prodigious strength, and his voice was louder 
 than that of ten thousand mortals. He is represented as a warrior of a severe and menacing 
 air, dressed in the style of the Heroic Age, with a cuirass on, and a round Grecian shield on his 
 arm. He is sometimes seen standing in a chariot, with Cellona his sister for a charioteer. 
 Terror and Fear accompany him ; Discord, in tattered garments, goes before him, and Anger 
 and Clamor follow. 
 
 4. Jlpol' lo, the god of archery, prophecy, and music, is represented in the perfection of manly 
 trength and beauty, with hair long and curling, and bound behind his head ; his brows are 
 wreathed with bay : sometimes he bears a lyre in his hand, and sometimes a bow, with a gold- 
 en quiver of arrows at his back. 
 
 5. Vul' can was the fire-god of the Greeks, and the artificer of heaven. He was born lame, 
 and his mother Juno was so shocked at the sight that she flung him from Olym' pus. He 
 forged the thunderbolts of , Jupiter, also the arms of gods and demi-gods. He is usually repre- 
 tented as of ripe age, with a serious countenance and muscular form. His hair hangs in curl*
 
 26 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART I. 
 
 Diana, 1 and Miner' va.* There were two other celestial divinities, 
 Ceres 3 and Ves'ta, 4 making, with Jiino, Nep'tune, and Pluto, twelve 
 in all. 
 
 10. The number of other deities, not included among the celestials, 
 was indefinite, the most noted of whom were Bac'chus, 5 1'ris, 6 Hebe, 7 
 the Muses, 8 the Fates, 9 and the Graces; 10 also Sleep, Dreams, and 
 Death. There were also monsters, the offspring of the gods, pos- 
 sessed of free will and intelligence, and having the mixed forms of 
 
 on his shoulders. He generally appears at his anvil, in a short tunic, with his right, arm bare, 
 and sometimes with a pointed cap on his head. 
 
 1. Di&nn, the exact counterpart of her brother Apol' lo, was queen of the woodsy cad the 
 goddess of hunting. She devoted herself to perpetual celibacy, and her Qhief joy was to speed 
 like a Dorian maid over the hills, followed by a train of nymphs, in pursuit of the flyine game. 
 She is represented as a strong, active maiden, lightly clad, with a bow or hunting spear in her 
 hand, a quiver of arrows on her shoulders, wearing the Cretan hunting-shoes, and attended by 
 a hound. 
 
 2. Miner' va, the goddess of wisdom and still, and, as opposed to Mars, the patroness and 
 teacher of just and scientific warfare, is said to have sprung, full armed, from the brain of Ju 
 piter. She is represented with a serious and thoughtful countenance; her hair hangs in ring- 
 lets over her shoulders, and a helmet covers her head : she wears a long tunic or n.^Ie, and 
 bears a spear in one hand, and an aegis or shield, on which is a figure of the Gorgon's head, in 
 the other. 
 
 3. Ceres was the goddess of grain and harvests. The most celebrated event in her history is 
 the carrying off of her daughter Pros' erpine by Pluto, and the search of the goddess after her 
 throughout the whole world. The form of Ceres is like that of Juno. She is represented bear- 
 ing poppies and ears of corn in one hand, a lighted torch in the other, and wearing on her head 
 a garland of poppies. She is also represented riding in a chariot drawn by dragons, aiid dis- 
 tributing corn to the different regions of the earth. 
 
 . 4. Yes' to, the virgin goddess who presided over the domestic hearth, Is represented rr. a long 
 flowing robe, with a veil on her head, a lamp in one hand, and a spear or javelin in the other. 
 [n every Grecian city an altar was dedicated to her, on which a sacred fire was kept constantly 
 burning. In her temple at Home the sacred fire was guarded by six priestesses, called the 
 Vestal Virgins. 
 
 5. Bac' chits, the god of wine, and the patron of drunkenness and debauchery, is represented 
 as an effeminate young man, with long flowing hair, crowned with a garland of vine leaves, 
 and generally covered with a cloak thrown loosely over his shoulders. In one hand he holds a 
 goblet, and in the other clusters of grapes and a short dagger. 
 
 6. 1' ris, the " golden winged," was the goddess of the rainbow, and special messenger of the 
 king and queen of Olympus. 
 
 7. The blooming Hebe, the goddess of Youth, was a kind of maid-servant who handed around 
 the nectar at the banquets of the gods. 
 
 8. The Muses, nine in number, were goddesses who presided over poetry, music, and all the 
 liberal arts and sciences. They are thought to be personifications of the inventive pcwers of 
 the mind, as displayed in the several arts. 
 
 9. The Fates were three goddesses who presided over the destinies of mortals : 1st. Clothe, 
 who held the distaff; 2d, Lach' esis, who spun each one's portion of the thread of life ; and 3d, 
 At' ropos, who cut off the thread with her scissors. 
 
 "Clotho and Lach' esis, whose boundless sway, 
 With At' ropos, both men and gods obey !" HKSIOD. 
 
 10. The Graces were three young and beautiful sisters, whose na-nes signified, respective^, 
 Splendor, Joy, and Pleasure. They are supposed to have been a symbolical representation of 
 all that is beautiful and attractive. They are represented as dancing together, or standing with 
 their arms entM ine J.
 
 CHAP. II] GRECIAN HISTORY. 27 
 
 animals and men. Such were the Har'pies; 1 the Gorgons;* the 
 winged horso Peg' asus ; the fifty, or, as some say, the hundred head- 
 ed dog Cer'berus; the Cen'taurs, half men and half horses; the 
 Ler'nean Hy'dra, a famous water serpent ; and Scyl'la and Charyb'- 
 dis, fearful sea monsters, the one changed into a rock, and the other 
 into a whirlpool on the coast of Sicily, the dread of mariners. 
 Many rebellious attempts were made by the gods and demi-gods to 
 dethrone Jupiter ; but by his unparalleled strength he overcame all 
 his enemies, and holding his court on mount Olym'pus, 3 reigned su- 
 preme god over heaven and earth. 
 
 1 1. Such is the brief outline of Grecian mythology. The legends 
 of the gods and goddesses are numerous, and some of them are of 
 exceeding interest and beauty, while others shock and disgust us by 
 the gross impossibilities and hideous deformities which they reveal. 
 The great mass of the Grecian people appear to have believed that 
 their divinities were real persons ; but their philosophers explained 
 the legends concerning them as allegorical representations of general 
 physical and moral truths. The Greek, therefore, instead of wor- 
 shipping nature, worshipped the powers of nature personified. 
 
 12. The earliest reliable information that we possess of the country 
 denominated Greece, represents it in the possession of m BARLI EST 
 a number of rude tribes, of which the Pelas' gians were INHABITANTS 
 the most numerous and powerful, and probably the most OF GEEECK ^ 
 ancient. The name Pelas' gians was also a general one, under 
 which were included many kindred tribes, such as the Dol' opes, Cha- 
 ones, and Grse'ci; but still the origin and extent of the race are in- 
 volved in much obscurity. 
 
 13. Of the early character of the Pelas' gians, and of the degree 
 of civilization to which they had attained before the reputed found- 
 ing of Ar' gos, we .have unsatisfactory and conflicting accounts. On 
 the one hand they are represented as no better than the rudest bar- 
 barians, dwelling in caves, subsisting on reptiles, herbs, and wild 
 fruits, and strangers to the simplest arts of civilized life. Other and 
 more reliable traditions, however, attribute to them a knowledge of 
 
 1. The Har'pies were three-winged monsters who had female faces, and the bodies, wings, 
 and claws of birds. They are supposed to be personifications of the terrors of the storm de- 
 mons riding upon the wind, and directing its blasts. 
 
 2. The Our' gons were three hideous female forms, who turned to stone all whom they fixed 
 their eyes upon. They are supposed to be personifications of the terrors of the sea. 
 
 3. Olympus is a celebrated mountain of Greece, near the north-eastern coast of Thessaly. To 
 the highest summit in the range the name Olympus was specially applied by the poets. It was 
 the tabled residence of the gods; and hence the name " Olym'pus" was frequently used for 
 " Heaven."
 
 28 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART! 
 
 agriculture, and some little acquaintance with navigation ; while 
 there is a strong probability that they were the authors* of those huge 
 structures commonly called Cyclopean, 1 remains of which are still 
 visible in many parts of Greece and Italy, and on the western coast 
 of Asia Minor. 2 
 
 14. Ar'gos, 9 the capital of Ar'golis, 4 is generally considered the 
 iv FOREIGN mos * anc i ent c ^ v f Gr eece ; and its reputed founding 
 SETTLERS ix by In' achus, a son of the god Oceanus, 6 1856 years be- 
 GEEECE. f ore {.^e c nr i s tian era, is usually assigned as the period 
 of the commencement of Grecian history. But the massive Cyclo- 
 pean walls of Ar' gos evidently show the Pelas' gic origin of the place, 
 in opposition to the traditionary Phoenician origin of In' achus, 
 whose very existence is quite problematical. And indeed the ac- 
 counts usually given of early foreign settlers in Greece, who planted 
 colonies there, founded dynasties, built cities, and introduced a 
 
 1. The Cyclopean structures were works of extraordinary magnitude, consisting of walls and 
 circular buildings, constructed of immense blocks of stone placed upon each other without 
 cement, but so nicely fitted as to form the most solid masonry. The most remarkable are cer- 
 tain walls at Tir' yns, or Tiryn' thus, and the circular tower of At' reus at Myccna, both cities 
 of Ar'golis in Greece. The structure at Mycena is a hollow cone fifty feet in diameter, and as 
 many in height, formerly terminating in a point ; but the central stone and a few others have 
 been removed. The Greek poets ascribed these structures to the three Cyclopes Brontes, Ster'- 
 opes, and Jtr' ges, fabulous one-eyed giants, whose employment was to fabricate the thunder- 
 bolts of Jupiter. (See Cycl6pes, p. 22.) 
 
 2. Asia. Minor, (or Lesser Asia,) now embraced mostly in the Asiatic portion of Turkey, 
 comprised that western peninsula of Asia which lies between the waters of the Mediterranean 
 and the Black Sea. (See Map, No. IV.) 
 
 3. Ar' gos, a city of southern Greece, and anciently the capital of the kingdom of Ar'golis, is 
 situated on the western bank of the river In' achus, two miles from the bottom of the Gulf of 
 Ar'gos, and on the western side of a plain ten or twelve miles in length, and four or five in 
 width. The eastern side of the plain is dry and barren, and here were situated Tir' yns, from 
 which Her' cules departed at the commencement of his " labors," and Mycena, the royal city 
 of Agamem' non. The immediate vicinity of Ar' gos was injured by excess of moisture. Here, 
 near the Gulf, was the marsh of Ler' no, celebrated for the Ler' nean Hy' dra, which Her' cules 
 slew. 
 
 But few vestiges of the ancient city of Ar' gos are now to be seen. The elevated rock on 
 which stood the ancient citadel, is now surmounted by .a modern castle. The town suffered 
 much during the revolutionary struggle between the Greeks and Turks. The present popula- 
 tion is about 3,000. (See Map, No. I.) 
 
 4. Ar'golif, a country of Southern Greece, is properly a neck of land, deriving its name from 
 ite capital city, Ar' gos, and extending in a south-easterly direction from Arcadia fifty-four miles 
 Into the sea, where it terminates in the promontory of Sell' laeum. Among the noted places in 
 Ar' golis have been mentioned Ar' gos, Mycena, Tir' yns, and the Ler' nean marsh. JVemea, 
 in the north of Ar' golis, was celebrated for tho JYemean lion, and for the games instituted there 
 in honor of Nep' tune. JVaitplia, or Napoli di Romani, which was the post and arsenal of 
 ancient Ar' gos during the best period of Grecian history, is now a flourishing, enterprising, 
 and beautiful town of about 16,000 inhabitants. (See Map, No. I.) 
 
 5 Oceanus. (See " The Titans," p. 22) In' achus was probably only a river, personified into 
 toe founder of a Grecia i state. 
 
 . Thirwall's Greece i. p. 52; Anthon's Classical Diet., articles Pelasgi and Ar' gos ; also 
 Ueeren's Manual of Ancient History, p. 119.
 
 CHAP. II. ] GRECIAX HISTORY. 29 
 
 knowledge of the arts unknown to the ruder natives, must be taken 
 with a great degree of abatement. 
 
 15. Ceerops, an Egyptian, is said to have led a colony from 
 the Delta to Greece about the year 1550 B. C. Two years later, 
 proceeding to At' tica, 1 which had been desolated by a deluge a cen- 
 tury before, during the reign of Og' yges," he is said to have founded, 
 on the Cccropian rock, a new city, which he called Athens, 3 in honor 
 of the Grecian goddess Athe' na, whom the Romans called Miner' va, 
 To Ceerops has been ascribed the institution of marriage, and the 
 introduction of the first elements of Grecian civilization ; yet, not 
 only has the Egyptian origin of Ceerops been doubted, but his very 
 existence has been denied, a and the whole story of his Egyptian col- 
 ony, and of the arts which he is said to have established, has been 
 attributed, with much show of reason, to a homcsprung Attic fable. 
 
 16. Asa part of the history of ecrops, it is represented that in 
 his days the gods began to choose favorite spots among the dwellings 
 of men for their residences ; or, in other words, that particular 
 deities began to be worshipped with especial homage in particular 
 cities ; and that when Miner' va and Nep' tune claimed the homage 
 of At' tica, Ceerops was chosen umpire of the dispute. Nep' tune 
 asserted that he had appropriated the country to himself before it 
 had been claimed by Miner' va, by planting his trident on the rock 
 of the Acrop' olis of Athens ; and, as proof of his claim, he pointed 
 
 1. Jit' tica, the most celebrated of the Grecian States, and the least proportioned, in extent, 
 of any on the face of the earth, to its fame and importance in the history of mankind, is situ- 
 ated at the south-eastern extremity of Northern Greece, having an extent of about forty-five 
 miles from east to west, and an average breadth of about thirly-five. As the soil of At' tica was 
 mostly rugged, and the surface consisted of barren hills, or plains of little extent, its produce 
 was never sufficient to supply the wants of its inhabitants, who were therefore compelled to 
 look abroad for subsistence. Thus the barrenness of the Attic soil rendered the people indus- 
 trious, and filled them with that spirit of enterprise and activity for which they were so dis- 
 tinguished. Secure in her sterility, the soil of At' tica never tempted the cupidity of her neigh- 
 bors, and she boasted that the race of her inhabitants had ever been the same. Among the 
 advantages of At' tica may be reckoned the purity of its air, the fragrance of its shrubs, and 
 the excellence of its fruits, together with its form and position, which marked it out, in an emi- 
 nent degree, for commercial pursuits. Its most remarkable plains are those of Athens and 
 Mar'athon, and its principal rivers the Cephis'sus and Ilys'sus. (S?e Map, No. I.) 
 
 2. Og' yores is fabled to have been the first king of Athens and of Thebes also. It is also said 
 that in the time of Og' yges happened a deluge, which preceded that of Deucalion ; and Og' yges 
 is said to have been the only person saved when Greece was covered with water. 
 
 3. Athens. (See Map No. II. and description.) 
 
 a. "Notwithstanding the confidence with which this story (that of Ceerops) has been repeated 
 in modern times, the Egyptian origin of Ceerops is extremely doubtful." Thirwall i. p. 53 
 "The story of his leading a colony from Egypt to Athens is entitled to no credit."" The whole 
 series of Attic kings who are said to have preceded Theseus, inclining perhaps Theseue himself 
 are probably mere fictions." Anthonys Gas. Diet., article " Cicrops."
 
 30 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PABT I 
 
 to the trident standing there erect, and to the salt spring which had. 
 issued from the fissure in the cliff, and which still continued to 
 flow. On the other hand, Miner' va pointed to the olive which she 
 had planted long ago, and which still grew in native luxuriance by 
 the side of the fountain wnich, she asserted, had been produced at a. 
 later period by the hand of Nep' tune. Cecrops himself attested tho 
 truth of her assertion, when the gods, according to one account, but, 
 according to another, Cecrops himself, decided in favor of Miner' va, 
 who then became the tutelary deity of Athens. 
 
 17. Cran'aus, the successor of Cecrops on the list of Attic kings, 
 was probably a no less fabulous personage than his predecessor ; and 
 of Amphic' tyon, the third on the list, who is said to have been the 
 founder of the celebrated Amphictyonic council, our knowledge is as 
 limited and as doubtful as of the former two. a About half a century 
 after the time of Cecrops, another Egyptian, by name Dan' aus, is 
 said to have fled to Greece with a family of fifty daughters, and to 
 have established a second Egyptian colony in the vicinity of Ar' gos ; 
 and about the same time, Cad.' mus, 1 a Phoenician, is reported to have 
 led a colony into Boeotia, 2 bringing with him the Phoenician alphabet, 
 the basis of the Grecian, and to have founded Cad' mea, which after- 
 wards became the citadel of TLebes. 3 
 
 1. There is no good reason for believing that Cad' mus was the founder of Thebes, as his his- 
 tory is evidently fabulous, although there can be little doubt that the alphabet attributed to 
 him was originally brought from Phoenicia. (See Thirwall,!. p. 107.) We may therefore ven- 
 ture to dismiss the early theory of Cad' mus, and seek a Grecian origin for the name of the sup- 
 posed founder of Thebes. 
 
 2. B<B6tia, lying north-west of At' tica, is a high and well-watered region, mostly surrounded 
 by mountain ranges, of which the most noted summits are those of Hel' icon and Cithaj' ron 
 in the south-west. Boeotia is divided into two principal basins or plains, that of Cephis' sus in 
 the north-west, watered by the river of the same name, and containing the lake of Copais; and 
 that of Thebes in the south-east, watered by the river Asopus. As many of the streams and 
 lakes of Boeotia find their outlet to the sea by subterranean channels, marshes abound, and the 
 atmosphere is damp, foggy, oppressive, and in many places unhealthy. The fertility of Boeotia, 
 however, is such, that it has always an abundant crop, though elsewhere famine should pre- 
 vail. Boeotia was the most populous of all the Grecian states ; but the very productiveness of 
 the country seems to have depressed the intellectual and moral character of the Boeotians, and 
 to have justified the ridicule which their more enterprising neighbors of barren At' tica heaped 
 upon them. (See Map, No. I.) 
 
 3. Thebes, the ancient capital of Boeotia, was situated near the small river (or brook) Is- 
 m6nus, about five miles south of the lake Hyl'ica. The city was surrounded by high walla, 
 which bad seven gates, and it contained many magnificent temples, theatres, gymcasiuins, and 
 other public edifices, adorned with statues, paintings, and other works of art. In the most 
 flourishing period of its history, the population of the city amounted to perhaps 50,000. The 
 modern town of Thebes, (called Th'iva,) contains a population of about 5,000 souls, and is confined 
 mostly to the eminence occupied by the Acropolis, or citadel, of the ancient city. Prodigious 
 ramparts and artificial mounds appear outside of the town : it is surrounded by a deep fosse ; 
 
 a, "There can be scarcely any reasonable doubt that this Amphic' tyon is a merely fictitious 
 rrson." - ThirwaV. \. *. 149.
 
 CHAT. H] GRECIAN HISTORY. 81 
 
 18. These and many other accounts of foreign settlers in Greece 
 during this early period of Grecian history, are so interwoven with 
 the absurdest fables, or, rather, deduced from them, that no reliance 
 can be placed upon their authenticity. Still, these traditions are 
 not without their value, for although the particular persons men- 
 tioned may have had no existence, yet the events related can hardly 
 have been without some historical foundation. It is probable that 
 after the general diffusion of the Pelas' gic tribes over Greece, and 
 while the western regions of Asia and northern Africa were in an 
 unsettled state, various bands of flying or conquering tribes found 
 their way to the more peaceful shores of Greece through the islands 
 of the JE' gean, 1 bringing with them the arts and knowledge of the 
 countries which they had abandoned. It is thus that we can satis- 
 factorily account for that portion of Grecian mythology which bears 
 evident marks of Phoenician origin, and for that still greater por- 
 tion of the religious notions and practices, objects and forms of Gre- 
 cian worship, which, according to Herod' otus, were derived from the 
 Egyptians. 
 
 19. At the time that colonies from the East are supposed to 
 have been settling in Greece, a people called the Hel- v . THE 
 Zenes, but whether a Pelas' gic tribe or otherwise is un- HELLENES. 
 certain, first appeared in the south of Thes' saly, 2 about 1384 years 
 before the Christian era, according to the received chronology, and 
 
 and remains of the old walls are still to be seen; but the sacred and public edifices of the an- 
 cient city have wholly disappeared. Previous to the late Greek Revolution the city had some 
 handsome mosques, a bazaar shaded by gigantic palm-trees, and extensive gardens, but these 
 were almost wholly destroyed by the casualities of war. (See Map, No. I.) i 
 
 1. The JE' gean Sea is that part of the Mediterranean lying between Greece and Asia Minor, 
 now called the Grecian Archipelago. (See Map, No. III.) 
 
 2. Th.es' saly, now included in Turkey in Europe, was bounded on the north by the Cambu- 
 nian mountains, terminating, on the east, in the loftier heights of Olympus, and separating 
 Thes' sa.j from Macedonia ; on the east by the JE,' gean Sea, which is skirted by ranges of Ossa 
 and Pelion ; on the south by the Malian gulf and the mountain chain of CEta ; and on the 
 west b7 the chain of Pindus, which separated it from Epirus. In the southern part of this ter- 
 ritory, between the mountain chains of CEta and Othrys, is the long and narrow valley of the 
 river Siwrchius, which, though considered as a part of Thes' saly, forms a separate region, 
 widely distinguished from the rest by its physical features. Between the Othrys and the Cam- 
 bunian mountains lies the great basin of Thes' saly, the largest and richest plain in Greece, en- 
 compassed on all sides by a mountain barrier, broken only at the north-east corner by a deep 
 and narrow cleft, which parts Ossa from Olympus the defile so renowned in history .8 the 
 pass, ana in poetry as the Vale of Tem'pe. Through this narrow glen, of about five miles in 
 length, the Peneus, the principal river of Thes' saly, finds its way to the sea ; and an ancient 
 legend asserts that the waters of the Peneus and its tributaries covered the whole basin of 
 Thes' saly, until the arm of Her' cules, or, as some assert, the trident of Nep' tune, rent asunder 
 the gorge of Tem'pe, and thus afforded a passage to the pent-up streams. Herod' oius says, 
 "To me the separation of these mountains appeals to have been the effect of an earthquake." 
 

 
 32 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAST L 
 
 gradually diffusing themselves over the whole country, became, by 
 their martial spirit, and active, enterprising genius, the ruling class. 
 and impressed new features upon the Grecian character. The Hel 
 lenes gave their name to the population of the whole peninsula, al 
 though the term Grecians was the name applied to them by th< 
 Romans. 
 
 20. In accordance with the Greek custom of attributing the origir 
 of their tribes or nations to some remote mythical ancestor, Hel' len, 
 a son of the fabulous Deucalion, is represented as the father of the 
 Hel' leuic nation. His three sons were M' olus, Dorus, and Xuthus, 
 from the two former of whom are represented to have descended the 
 JEolians and Dorians ; and from Achas'us and I' on, sons of Xu- 
 thus, the Achce' ans and lonians, the four tribes into which th^ 
 Hel'lenic or Grecian nation was for many centuries divided, and 
 which were distinguished from each other by many peculiarities of 
 language and institutions. 1 Hel' len is said to have left his kingdom 
 to JSt' olus, his eldest son ; and the JEolian tribe was the one that 
 spread the most widely, and that long exerted the greatest influence 
 in the affairs of the nation, although at a later period it was surpassed 
 by t'ue fame and power of the Dorians and lonians. 
 
 2 1 . The period from the time of the first appearance of the Hel- 
 vi. THE lenes in Thes' saly, to the return of the Greeks from the 
 
 HEB.OIC AGE. expedition against Troy, is usually called the Heroic 
 Age. Our only knowledge of Grecian history during this period is 
 derived from numerous marvellous legends of wars, expeditions, and 
 heroic achievements, which possess scarcely the slightest evidence of 
 historical authenticity ; and which, even if they can be supposed to 
 rest on a basis of fact, would be scarcely deserving of notice, as being 
 unattended with any important or lasting consequences, were it not 
 for the light which they throw upon the subject of Grecian mythol- 
 ogy, and the gradual fading away, which they exhibit, of fiction, in 
 the dawn of historic truth. The most important of these legends are 
 those which recount the Labors of Her' cules 1 and the exploits of the 
 
 I. Her' cules, a celebrated hero, is reported to have been a son of the god Jupiter and Alo- 
 menu. While yet an infant, Juno, moved by jealousy, sent two serpents to devour him ; but 
 the child boldly seized them in both his hands, and squeezed them to death. By an oath of 
 Jupiter, imposed upon him by the artifice of Juno, Her' cules was made subservient, for twelve 
 years, to the will of Eurys' theus, his enemy, and bound to obey all his commands. Eurys'' 
 theus commanded him to achieve a number of enterprises, the mo it difficult and arduous ever 
 known, generally called the " twelve labors of Her'cules." Bat the favor of the gods had com. 
 
 *. " We believe Hel' len, M' olus, Dorus, Achae' us, and ' on, to be merely fictitious persona, 
 rapreaentatives of the races which bore their names." nirwall,i. ji 66.
 
 CHAP. II.] GRECIAN HISTORY. 33 
 
 Athenian Theseus; 1 the events of the Argonautic expedition; 8 of 
 the Theban and Ar'golic war of the Seven Captains; 3 and of the 
 succeeding war of the Epig' onoi, or descendants of the survivors, in 
 
 plelely armed hr'm for the undertaking. IIo had received a sword from Mer'cury, a bow 
 from Apol' lo, a golden breastplate from Vul' can, horses from Nep' tune, a robe from Miner' va ; 
 and he himself cut his club from the Nemean wood. We have merely room to enumerate his 
 twelve labors, without describing them. 
 
 1st. He strangled the Nemean lion, which ravaged the country near Mycenze, and ever after 
 rlothed himself with its skin. 2d. He destroyed the Lernean hydra, a water-serpent, which 
 flad nine heads, eight of them mortal, and one immortal. 3d. He brought into the presence of 
 Eiirys' theus a stasr, famous for its incredible swiftness and golden horns. 4th. He brought to 
 Mycenae the wild boar of Erymsn' thus, and during this expedition slew two of the Centaurs, 
 monsters who were half men ar-d half horses. 5th. He cleansed the Augean stables in one 
 day, by changing the courses of the rivers Al' Jlheus and Feneus. ("To cleanse the Augean 
 stables" has become a common proverb, and is applied to any undertaking where the object 
 is to remove a mass of moral corruption, the accumulation of which renders the task almost 
 impossible.") 6th. He destroyed the carnivorous birds which ravaged the country near the 
 Lake Stjmphalus in Arcadia. 7. He brought alive into Peloponnesus a prodigious wild bull 
 which ravaged the island of Crete. 8th. He brought from Thrace the mares of Diomede, which 
 fed on human flesh. 9th. He obtained the famous girdle of Hippol' yta, queen of the Amazons. 
 10th. He killed, in an island of the Atlantic, the monster Geryon, who had the bodies of three 
 men united, and brought away his purple oxen. llth. He obtained from the garden of the 
 Hesper' ides the golden apples, and slew the dragon which guarded them. 12th. He went 
 down to the lower regions, and brought upon earth the three-headed dog Cer'berus. 
 
 1. To Theseus, who is stated to have become king of Athens, are attributed many exploits 
 similar to those performed by Her' cules, and he even shared in some of the enterprises of the 
 latter. I?y his wise laws Theseus is said to have laid the principal foundation of Athenian 
 greatness ; but his name, which signifies the Orderer, or Regulator, seems to indicate a period 
 in Grecian history, rather than an Individual. 
 
 2. The Argonautic Expedition is said, in the popular legend, to have been undertaken by 
 Jason and fifty-four of the most renowned heroes of Greece, among whom were Theseus and 
 Her' cules, for the recovery of a. <ruldcnflce.ee which had been deposited in the capital of Col- 
 chis, a province of Asia Minor, bordering on the eastern extremity of the Euxine. The adven- 
 turers sailed from lol' cos in the ship Ar' go, and during the voyage met with many adventures. 
 Having arrived at Col' chis, they would have been unsuccessful in the object of their expedi- 
 tion had not thfi king's daughter, Medea, who was an enchantress, fallen in love with Jason, 
 and defeated the plans of her father for his destruction. After a long return voyage, filled with 
 marvellous adventures, most of the Argonauts reached Greece in safety, where Her' cules, in 
 honor of the expedition, instituted the Olym'pic games. 
 
 Some have supposed this to have been a piratical expedition ; others, that it was undertaken 
 for the purpose of discovery, or to secure some commercial establishment on the shores of the 
 Euxine, while others have regarded the legend as wholly fabulous. Says Grote, " I repeat the 
 opinion long ago expressed, that the process of dissecting the story, in search of a basis of fact, 
 is one altogether fruitless." Orote'g Hist, of Greece, i. 243. 
 
 3. The following are said to have been the circumstances of the Theban and Jlr' eolic war. 
 After the death of CE' dipus, king of Thebes, it was agreed between his two sons, Eteocles and 
 Polynices, that they should reign alternately, each a year. Eteocles, however, the elder, 
 after his first year had expired, refused to give up the crown to his brother, when the latter, 
 fieeir.',' to Ar'gos, induced Adras'tus, .king of that place, to espouse his cause. Adras' tus 
 marched an army against Thebes, led by himself and seven captains; but all the leaders were 
 flain before the city, and the war ended by a single combat between Eteocles and Polyniees, 
 'n which both brothers fell. This is said to have happened twenty-seven years before the 
 Trojan war. Ten ;eaH later the war was renewed by the F.pig' onoi, descendants of those who 
 were killed in the first Theban war. Some of the Grecian states espoused the cause of the 
 Ar' gives, and others aided the Thebans ; but in the end Thebes was abandoned by its inhabit- 
 ants, and plundered by the Ar' gives. 
 
 3
 
 34 ANCIENT HTSTORT. [PAET L 
 
 which Thebes is said to have been plundered by the confederate 
 Greeks. 
 
 22. Of these events, the Argonautic expedition has usually been 
 thought of more importance than the rest, as having been conducted 
 against a distant country, and as presenting some valid claims to 
 our belief in its historical reality. But \V3 incline to the opinion, 
 that both the hero and the heroine of tho legend are purely ideal 
 personages connected with Grecian mythology, that Jason was per- 
 haps no other than the Samothracian 1 god or hero Jasion, a the pr.o- 
 tector of mariners, and that the fable of the expedition itself is a 
 poetic fiction which represented the commercial and piratical voy- 
 ages that began to be made, about this period, to the eastern shores of 
 the Euxine. 2 It is not improbable that voyages similar to that rep- 
 resented to have been made by the Argonauts, or, perhaps, naval 
 expeditions like those attributed to Minos, 3 the Cretan 4 prince 
 and lawgiver, may first have led to hostile rivalries between the 
 inhabitants of the Asiatic and Grecian coasts, and thus have been 
 the occasion of the first conflict between the Greeks and the Tro- 
 jans. 11 
 
 23. The Trojan war, rendered so celebrated in early Grecian his- 
 
 1. SamothrA.ce (the Thracian Samos, now Saraothraki,) is an island in the northern part of 
 the JEi' gean Sea, about thirty miles south of the Thracian coast. It was celebrated for the mys- 
 teries of the goddess Cyb' ele, whose priests ran about with dreadful cries and bowlings, beat- 
 ing on timbrels, clashing cymbals, and cutting their flesh with knives. (See Map No. III.) 
 
 2. The Euzine (Pon'tus Euxinus) is now called the Black Sea. It lies between the south- 
 western provinces of Russia in Europe, and Asia Minor. Its greatest length, from east to west, 
 is upwards of 700 mile?, and its greatest breadth about 400 miles. Its waters are only about 
 one-seventh part less salt than the Atlantic a fact attributable to the saline nature of the bot- 
 tom, and of the northern coast. The Euxine is deep, and singularly free from rocks and shoals. 
 (See Mnp No. V.) 
 
 3. Minos is said, in the Grecian legends, to have been a son of Jupiter, from whom he 
 learned those laws which he delivered unto men. It is said that he was the first among the 
 Greeks who possessed a navy, and that he conquered and colonized several islands, and finally 
 perished in an expedition against Sicily. Some regard Minos simply as the concc ntration of 
 that spirit of order, which, about his time, began to exhibit, in the island of Crete, a regular 
 system of laws and government. He seems to be intermediate between the periods of inytuol 
 ogy and history, combining, in his person, the characteristics of both. 
 
 4. Crete (now called Candia) is a large mountainous island in the Mediterranean Sea, 80 miles 
 south-east from Cape Matapan in Greece 100 miles in length from east to west, with a breadth 
 averaging about 20 miles. Crete was the reputed birth-place of Jupiter, "king of gods and 
 men." The laws of Minos are said to have served as a model for those of Lycur' gus ; and the 
 wealth, number, and flourishing condition of the Cretan cities, are repeatedly referred to by 
 Homer. (See Map No. III.) 
 
 a. ThirwaH's Greece, i. 77-79. 
 
 b. According to Herod' otus, i. 2, 3, the abduction of HeV en, the cause of the Trojan war, was 
 in retaliation of the abduction of Medea by Jason in the Argonautic expedition. But Herod'- 
 otus goes farther back, and attributes to the Phoenicians !he first cause of contention between 
 the Asia'ics and the Grecians, in carrying away from Ar'gos, lo, a priestess of Jiiuo.
 
 CHAP. II J GRECIAN HISTORY. 35 
 
 tory by the poems of Homer, 1 is represented to have been under- 
 taken about the year 1173 before the Christian era, by the confed 
 erate princes of Greece, against the city and kingdom of Troy, 1 
 situated on the western coast of Asia Minor. The alleged causes 
 of this war, according to the Grecian legend ; were the following : 
 Hel' en, the most beautiful woman of her age, and daughter of Tyn'- 
 darus, king of Lacedas^mon, was sought in marriage by all the 
 princes of Greece ; -when Tyn' darus, perplexed with the difficulty of 
 choosj'ig one without displeasing all the rest, being advised by tho 
 _^^e Ulys' ses, bound the suitors by an oath that they would approve 
 of the uninfluenced .hoice of Hel' en, and would unite together to 
 defend her person and character, if ever any attempts were made to 
 carry her off from her husband. Menelaus became the choice of 
 Hel' en, and soon after, on the death of Tyn' darus, succeeded to the 
 vacant throne of Lacedas' mon. 3 
 
 24. After three years, Paris, son of Priam king of Troy, visited 
 the court of Menelaus, and taking advantage of the temporary ab- 
 sence of the latter, he corrupted the fidelity of Hel' en, whom he 
 induced to flee with him to Troy. Menelaus, returning, prepared to 
 avenge the outrage. He assembled the princes of Greece, who, 
 combining their forces under the command of Agamem' non, brother 
 of Menelaus, sailed with a great armament to Troy, and after a siege 
 of ten years finally took the city by stratagem, and razed it to the 
 ground. (1183 B. C.) Most of the inhabitants were slain or taken 
 prisoners, and the rest were forced to become exiles in distant 
 lands. 
 
 1. Homer, the greatest and earliest of the poets, often styled the father of poetry, was prob- 
 ably ao Asiatic Greek, although seven Grecian cities contended for the honor of his birth. No 
 circumstances of his life are known with any certainty, except that he was a wandering poet, 
 nnd blind. The principal works of Homer are the Iliad and the Od' yssey, the former of 
 which relates the circumstances of the Trojan war ; and the latter, the history and wanderings 
 of Ulys' ses after the fall'of Troy. 
 
 2. Troy, the scene of the battles described in the Iliad, stood on a rising ground between the 
 small river Simois (now the Dumbrek) and the Seaman' der, (now the Mendere,) on the coast 
 of Asia Minor, near the entrance to the Hel' lespont. New ilium was afterwards built on the 
 spot now believed to be the site of the ancient city, about three miles from the sea. (.See Map 
 No. III. and No. IV.) 
 
 3. LacedtB 1 mon, or Spar' ta, the ancient capital of Laconia, was situated in a plain of con 
 siderable extent, embracing the greater part of Laconia, bounded on the west by the mountain 
 chain of Taygetus, and on the east by the less elevated ridge of mount Thornax, between which 
 flows the Eurotas, on the east side of the town. In early times Spar' ta was without walls, Ly- 
 cur' gus having inspired his countrymen with the idea, that the real defence of a town consisted 
 solely in the valor of its citizens ; but fortifications were erected after Sparta became subject 
 to despotic rulers. The remains 01 Spar' ta are about two miles nor fli-east of the modern town 
 Of Mistro. (See Map No. I.)
 
 36 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART L 
 
 25. Such is, in brief, the commonly-received account of tie Tro- 
 jan war, stripped of the incredible but glowing fictions with which 
 the poetic genius of Homer has adorned it. But although the 
 reality of some such war as this can hardly be questioned, yet the 
 causes which led to it, the manner in which it was conducted, and its 
 issue, being gathered, even by Homer himself, only from traditional 
 legends, which served as the basis of otljer compositions besides 
 the Iliad, are involved in an obscurity \\hich we cannot hope to 
 penetrate. The accounts of Hel' en are various and contraui'-tor\ , 
 and so connected with fabulous beings with gods and goddesses 
 clearly to assign her to the department of mythology ; while the 
 real events of the war, if such ever occurred, can hardly be separated 
 from the fictions with which they are interwoven. 1 
 
 26. But although little confidence can be placed in the reality of 
 the persons and events mentioned in Homer's poetic account of the 
 siege of Troy, yet there is one kind of truth from which the poet 
 can hardly have deviated, or his writings would not have been so ac- 
 ceptable as they appear to have been to his cotemporaries ; and 
 that is, a faithful portraiture of the government, usages, religious no- 
 tions, institutions, manners, and general condition of Grecian society, 
 during the heroic age. a 
 
 1. Thus the most ancient account of Hel'en is, that she was a daughter of the god Ju 
 piter, hatched from the egg of a swan ; and Homer speaks of her in the Iliad as " begotten 
 of Jupiter." When only seven years of age, such were her personal attractions, that Theseus, 
 king of Athens, having become enamored of her, carried her off from a festival at which he 
 saw her dancing ; but her brothers recovered her by force of arms, and restored her to her 
 family. After her marriage with Meuolaus, it is said that Jupiter, plotting a war for the pur- 
 pose of ridding the earth of a portion of its overstocked inhabitants, contrived that the beauty 
 of Hel' en should involve the Greeks and Trojans in hostilities. At a banquet of the gods, Dis- 
 cord, by the direction of Jupiter, threw into the assembly a golden apple, on which was in- 
 scribed, "The apple for the Fair one," (Tij <raA;J TO ^Aov,) or, as in Virgil, Pulcherrima me 
 habeto, "Let the most beautiful have me." The goddesses Juno, Miner' va, and Venus, claim- 
 ing it, Paris, the son of Priam, king of Troy, was made the arbiter. He awarded the prize to 
 Venus, who had promised him the beautiful Hel' en in marriage, if he would decide in her 
 favor. Venus (the goddess of love and beauty) caused Paris and Hel' en to become mutually 
 enamored, and afterwards aided the Trojans in the war that followed. Homer represents thi 
 heroes as performing prodigies of valor, shielded and aided by the gods ; and the gods them 
 selves as mingling in the strife, and taking part with the combatants. The goddess Miner' va 
 an unsuccessful competitor for the prize which Paris awarded to her rival Venus, planned tht 
 stratagem of the wooden horse, which concealed within its side a band of Greeks, who, borno 
 with it into the city, were thus enabled to open the gates to their confederates without. 
 
 a. " Homer was regarded even by the ancients as of historical authority." " Truth was his 
 object in his accounts and descriptions, as far as it can be the object of a poet, and even in a 
 greater degree than was necessary, when hedistinguishes the earlier and later times or ages. He 
 is the best source of information respecting the heroic age."- -Heeren'a Politics of f?rac,p. 82.
 
 CHAP. II,] EGYPTIAN HISTORY. 37 
 
 COTEMPORARY HISTORY 
 
 1. During the period of early Grecian history which we have 
 passed over in the present chapter, our knowledge of the coternpo- 
 rary history of other nations is exceedingly limited. Rome had not 
 yet a beginning : all Europe, except the little Grecian peninsula, 
 was in the darkness of barbarism : in Central Western Asia we in- 
 deed suppose there existed, at this time, large cities, and the flour- 
 ishing empires of Assyria and Babylon ; but from them we can 
 gather no reliable historic annals. In north-eastern Africa, indeed, 
 the Egyptian empire had already attained the meridian of its glory ; 
 but of the chronological detail of Egyptian history during this pe- 
 riod we know comparatively nothing. What is known relates prin- 
 cipally to the conquests of the renowned Sesos' tris, an Egyptian 
 .monarch, who, as nearly as can be ascertained, was coteniporary 
 with Oth'niel, the first judge of Israel, and with Cecrops, the sup- 
 posed founder of Athens, although some modern authors place his 
 reign a hundred years later. a This monarch is said to have achieved 
 many brilliant conquests as the lieutenant of his father. After he 
 came to the throne he made vast preparations for the conquest of the 
 world, and raised an army which is said to have numbered six hun 
 dred thousand foot and twenty-four thousand horse, besides twenty- 
 seven thousand armed chariots. He conquered Lib' ya l and Ethiopia,* 
 after which, entering Asia, he overran Arabia, subdued the Assyrians 
 
 and Medes, and even led his victorious hosts beyond the Ganges : 3 
 
 I 
 
 1. Lib' ya is the name which the Greek and Roman poets gave to Africa. In a more re- 
 stricted sense, however, the name was applied to that part of Africa, bordering on the Mediter- 
 ranean, which lies between Egypt on the east and Tripoli on the west, the most important 
 part of which territory is embnvid in the present Barca. 
 
 2. Ancient Ethiopia comprised, principally, the present countries of Nubia and Abyssinia, 
 south of Egypt. 
 
 3. The Ganges, the sacred river of the Hindoos, flowing south-east through the north- 
 
 a. The era of the accession of Sesos' tris, may be placed at 1565 B. C. ; that of Oth' niel at 
 1504 ; and the supposed founding of Athens at 1558, the latter two in accordance with Dr. 
 Hales. In Rollin the date for Sesos' tris is 1491 ; Hereen "about 1500" ; Russell's Egypt, 1308; 
 Mure, "between 1400 and 1410"; Gliddon's Egypt, 15(55; and Champolion Figeac (making 
 Sesos' tris the same as Ramses IV., at the head of the 19th dynasty), 1473. Eusebius, followed 
 by Usher and Playfair, supposes that Sesos' tris was the immediate successor of the Pharaoh who 
 was drowned in the Red Sea; while Marsham, followed by Newton, attempts to identify him 
 with the Shishak of Scripture who invaded Judea a difference, according to various systems 
 of chronology, of from 500 to 800 years. Mr. Bryant endeavors to prove that no such person 
 ever existed. 
 
 Since the interpretation of the hieroglyphics, however, the principal ground of dispute on this 
 subject among the learned, appears to be, whether the Sesos' tris so renowned in history was 
 the same as Ramses III., the fourteenth king of the 18th dynasty, or the same as Ramses IV., the 
 first king of the 19th dynasty, there "aeing a difference between the two of about a hundred years.
 
 38 ANCIENT HISTORY. I?AS.T I 
 
 he is also said to Lave passed over into Europe, and to have ravaged 
 the territories of the Thracians and the Scythians, 1 when scarcity of 
 provisions stopped the progress of his conquests. That the farne of 
 his deeds might long survive him, he erected columns in the countries 
 through which he passed, on which was inscribed, " Sesos' tris, king 
 of kings, and lord of lords, subdued this country by the power of his 
 arms." Some of these columns were still to be seen in Asia Minor 
 in the days of Herod' otus. 
 
 3. The deeds and triumphs of Sesos' tris are also wrought, in 
 sculpture and in painting, in numerous temples, and on the most 
 celebrated obelisks, from Ethiopia to Lower Egypt. At Ipsamboul," 
 in Nubia, is a temple cut out of the solid rock, whose front or fa- 
 (jade is supported by four colossal figures of exquisite workmanship, 
 each sixty feet high, all statues of Sesos' tris, the faces of which bear 
 a perfect resemblance to the figures of the same king at Mem' phis. 
 The walls of the temple are covered with numerous sculptures on his- 
 torical subjects, representing the conquests of this prince in Africa. 
 Among them are processions of the conquered nations, carrying the 
 riches of their country and laying them at the feet of the conqueror ; 
 and even the wild animals of the desert antelopes, apes, giraffes, 
 and ostriches are led in the triumphs of the Egyptians. 
 
 4. Were it not for the many similar monumental evidences of the 
 reign of this monarch, which have been recently discovered, corrobo- 
 rative of the deeds which profane authors attribute to him, we might 
 be disposed to regard Sesos' tris as others have done, as no more than 
 a mythological personification of the Sun, the god of day, " the 
 giant that rejoiceth to run his course from one end of heaven to the 
 other." But with such an amount of testimony bearing on the sub- 
 ject, we cannot doubt the existence of this mighty conqueror, al- 
 though probably his exploits have been greatly exaggerated by the 
 vanity of his chroniclers ; and it is not improbable that the deeds 
 of several monarchs have been attributed to one. After the return 
 of Sesos' tris from his conquests, he is said to have employed his. 
 time to the close of his reign, in encouraging the arts, erecting tem- 
 
 easteri, part of Hindostan, enters the Bay of Bengal, through a great number of mouths, near 
 Calcutta. 
 
 1. Thrace, a large tract of country now embraced in Turkey in Europe, and bordering on the 
 Propontis, or sea of Marmora, extended from Macedonia and the JE' gean Sea on the south-west, 
 to the Euxine on the north-east. North of the Thracians, extending along the Euxine to the 
 river Danube, was the country of the Scythians. 
 
 2. Ipsambaul, so celebrated for its well-known excavated temples, is in the northern part of 
 Nubia, on the western bonk of the Nile.
 
 CHAP. II.] 1HE ISRAELITES. 39 
 
 pies to the gods, and improving the revenues cf his kingdom. After 
 his time we know little of the history of Egypt until the reign of 
 Pharaoh-Necho, in the beginning of the seventh century, who is re 
 markable for his successes against Jerusalem. 
 
 5. At the period which we have assigned, somewhat arbitrarily. 
 for the commencement of Grecian history, 1856 years before the 
 Christian era, Joseph, the son of the patriarch Jacob, was governor 
 over Egypt ; and his father's family, by invitation of Pharaoh, had 
 settled in Goshen, on the eastern borders of the valley of the Nile. 
 This is supposed to have been about three centuries before the time 
 of Sesos' tris. On the death of Joseph, the circumstances of the de- 
 scendants of Jacob, who were now called Israelites, were greatly 
 changed. " A king arose who knew not Joseph ;" a and the children 
 of Israel became servants and bondsmen in the land of Egypt. Two 
 hundred years they were held in bondage, when the Lord, by his 
 servant Moses, brought b them forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand 
 and an outstretched arm, after inflicting the most grievous plagues 
 upon their oppressors, and destroying the pursuing hosts of Pharaoh 
 in the Ked Sea. (1648 B. C.) 
 
 6. Forty years the Israelites, numbering probably two millions 
 of souls, c wandered in the wilderness on the north-western confines 
 of Arabia, 1 supported by miraculous interposition ; for the country 
 was then, as now, " a land of deserts and of pits, a land of drouth 
 and of the shadow of death, a land that no man passed through, and 
 where no man dwelt ;" d and after they had completed their wander- 
 ings, and another generation had grown up since they had left Egypt, 
 they came to the river Jordan, 2 and passing through the bed of the 
 
 1. Arabia is an extensive peninsula at the south-western extremity of Asia, lying immediately 
 east of the Red Sea. It is mostly a rocky and desert country, inhabited by wandering tribes 
 of Arabs, the descendants of Ishmael. They still retain the character given to their ancestor. 
 The desert has continued to be the home of the Arab ; he has been a man of war from his 
 youth ; " his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him." (Gen. xvi. 12.) 
 
 2. The river Jordan (See Map, No. VI.) rises towards the northern part of Palestine, on the 
 western slope of Mount Hermon, and after a south course of about forty miles, opens into the 
 sea of Galilee near the ancient town of Bethsaida. After passing through this lake or sea, 
 which is about fifteen miles long and seven broad, and on and near which occurred so many 
 striking scenes in the history of Christ, it pursues a winding southerly course of about ninety 
 rnilea through a narrow valley, and then empties its waters into the Dead Sea. In this river- 
 valley was the dwelling of Lot, "who pitched his tents toward Sodom" (Gen. xiii. 11, 12) ; and 
 '' in the vale of Siddim, which is the salt sea," occurred the battle of the " four kings with flve. n 
 (Gen. xv.) The Israelites passed the Jordan near Jericho (Josh. iii. 14-17) ; the prophets Elijah 
 
 a. Paraphrased by Josephus as meaning that the kingdom had passed to another dynasty. 
 
 b. 1648, B.C. 
 
 c. They had 603,550 men, above 20 years of age, not reckoning Levites. Ex%dt3, xxxviii. 20. 
 
 d. Jei emiah, ii. 6.
 
 40 AXCIENT HISTORY. [P^i L 
 
 stream, which rolled back its waters on their approach, entered the 
 promised land of Palestine. 1 The death of Moses had left the gov- 
 ernment in the hands of Joshua. And " Israel served the Lord all 
 the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that outlived 
 Joshua, and which had known all the works of the Lord that he had 
 done for his chosen people. " a 
 
 7. From the time of the death of Joshua to the election of Saul 
 as first king of Israel, which latter event occurred about seventy 
 years after the supposed siege of Troy, Israel was ruled by judges, 
 who were appointed through the agency of the priests and of the 
 divine oracle, in accordance with the theocratic form of government 
 established by Moses. After the death of Joshua, however, the Is- 
 raelites often apostatized to idolatry, for which they were punished 
 by being successively delivered into the hands of the surrounding na- 
 tions. First they were subdued by the king of Mesopotamia, 11 after 
 which the Lord raised up Oth' niel to be their deliverer (1564 B. C.) . 
 a second defection was punished by eighteen years of servitude to the 
 king of the Moabites," from whom they were delivered by the enter- 
 
 aiid Elisha afterwards divided the waters to prove their divine mission (2 Kings, xi. 8) ; the 
 leper Naaman was commanded to wash in Jordan and be clean (2 Kings, iv. 10) ; and it is this 
 stream in which Jesus was baptized before he entered on his divine mission. (Matt. iii. 1G, &c.) 
 The Dead Sea, into which the Jordan empties, is so called from the heaviness and consequent 
 stillness of its waters, which contain one-fourth part of their weight of salts. The country 
 around this lake is exceedingly dreary, and the soil is destitute of vegetation. Sodom and Go- 
 morrah are supposed to have stood in the plain now occupied by the lake, and ruins of the 
 overthrown cities are said to have been seen on its western borders. (Map No. VI.) 
 
 1. Palestine, a. part of modern Syria, now embraced in Turkey in Asia, lies at the eastern 
 extremity of the Mediterranean Sea ; extending north and south along the coast about 200 
 miles, and having an extreme breadth of about 80 miles. Though in antiquity the northern 
 part of Palestine was the seat of the Phoenicians, a great commercial people, yet there are 
 now few good harbors on the coast, those of Tyre and Sidon, once so famous, being now for 
 the most part blocked up with sand. The country of Palestine consists principally of rugged 
 hills and narrow valleys, although it has a few plains of considerable extent. There are many 
 streams falling into the Mediterranean, the largest of which is the Orontes, at the north, but 
 none of them are navigable. The river Jordan, on the east, empties its waters into the As- 
 phaltic Lake, or Dead Sea, which lat,ter, about 55 miles in length, and 20 in extreme width, 
 now fills the plain where once stood the cities of Sodoin and Gomorrah. North of the Dead 
 Sea is the Lake of Gennesareth, or Sea of Galilee, the theatre of some most remarkable mir- 
 acles. (Matthew viii. ; Luke viii. ; Snd Matthew xix. 25.) The principal mountains of Pales- 
 tine are those of Lebanon, running in ranges nearly parallel to the Mediterranean, and finally 
 connecting with mounts Horeb and Sinai, near the Gulf of Suez. JERUSALEM, the capital 
 city of Palestine or the Holy Land, will be described in a subsequent article. (See p. 164, JtleCul 
 loch ; articles Syria, Said, or Sidon, Dead Sea, Lebanon, &c.) (Map No. VI.) 
 
 2. The Moabites, so called from Moab, the son of Lot (Gen. xix. 37), dwelt in the country on 
 the east of the Dead Sea. (Map No. VI.) 
 
 a. Joshua, xxiv. 31. 
 
 b. Numbers, iii. 8. Some think that the country here referred to was in the vicinity of 
 Damascus, and not "bjyond the Euphrates," as Mesopotamia would inmly. 'See Ctckai/ni 1 
 Civil Hi >t. of the Jewt. S&-33.)
 
 CHAP II.] THE ISRAELITES. 41 
 
 prising valor of Ehud. a After his death the Israelites again did evil 
 in the sight of the Lord, and " the Lord sold them into the hand of 
 Jabin king of Canaan," 1 under whose cruel yoke they groaned twenty 
 years, when the prophetess Deborah, and Barak her general, were 
 made the instruments of their liberation. The Canaanites were 
 routed with great slaughter, and their leader Sisera slain by Jael, in 
 whose tent he had sought refuge. b 
 
 8. Afterwards, the children of Israel were delivered over a prey 
 o the Midianites and Amalekites, 2 wild tribes of the desert, who 
 
 " came up with their cattle and their tents, as grasshoppers for mul- 
 titude." But the prophet Gideon, chosen by the Lord to be the 
 liberator of his people, taking with him only three hundred men, 
 made a night attack on the camp of the enemy, upon whom such fear 
 fell that they slew each other ; so that a hundred and twenty thou- 
 sand men were left dead on the field, and only fifteen thousand es- 
 caped by flight. In the height of their joy and gratitude, the peo- 
 ple would have made Gideon king, but he said to them, " Not I, nor 
 my son, but JEHOVAH shall reign over you." 
 
 9. Again the idolatry of the Israelites became so gross, that the Lord 
 delivered them into the hands of the Philistines' and the Ammonites, 4 
 from whom they were finally delivered by the valor of Jephthah.d 
 At a later period the Philistines oppressed Israel forty years, but the 
 people found an avenger in the prowess of Samson. 6 After the 
 death of Samson the aged Eli judged Israel, but the crimes of his 
 sons, Hophni and Phinehas, whom he had chosen to aid him in the 
 government, brought down the vengeance of the Lord, and thirty 
 thousand of the warriors of Israel were slain in battle by the Philis- 
 
 1. The Canaanites, so called from Canaan, one of the sons of Ham (Gen. x. 6-19), then dwelt 
 in the lowlands of the Galilee of the Gentiles, between the sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean. 
 Barak, descending from Mount Tabor (see Map), attacked Sisera on the banks of the river 
 Kishon. (Map No. VI.) 
 
 2. The Midianites, so called from one of the sons of Abraham by Keturah, dwelt in western 
 Arabia, near the head of the Red Sea. The Amalekites dwelt in the wilderness between the 
 Dead Sea and the Red Sea, (Map No. VI.) 
 
 3. The Philistines (see Map) dwelt on the south-western borders of Palestine, along the coast 
 of the Mediterranean, as far north as Mount Carmel, the commencement of the Phoenician 
 territories. Their principal towns were Gaza, Gath, Ascalon, and Megiddo, for which see Map. 
 The Israelite tribes of Simeon, Dan, Ephraim, and Manasseh, bordered on their territories. 
 "The whole of the towns of the coast continued in the hands of the Philistines and Phoenicians, 
 and never permanently fell under the dominion of Israel." Cockayne's Hint, of the Jews, p. 44, 
 
 4. The Ammonites (see Map) dwelt on the borders of the desert eastward of the Israelite 
 tribes that settled east of the Jordan. 
 
 a. Judges, iii. 15-30. b. Judges, iv. c. Judges, vl. ; vt,.; rlfl. 
 
 d. Judges, x. 7; xi. 33. e. Judges, xiii. 1 ; xiv. ; XT. ; xyi.
 
 42 AXCIEXT HISTORY [PART! 
 
 tines.* The prophet Samuel was divinely chosen as the successor of 
 Eli. (1152 B. C.) His administration was wise and prudent, but 
 in his old age the tyranny of his sons, whom he was obliged to em- 
 ploy as his deputies, induced the people to demand a king who 
 should rule over them like the kings of other nations. AVith reluct- 
 ance Samuel yielded to the popular request, and by divine guidance, 
 anointed Saul, of the tribe of Benjamin, king over Israel. b (1110 
 B. C.) 
 
 10. We have thus briefly traced the civil history of the Israelites 
 down to the period of the establishment of a monarchy over them, 
 in the person of Saul, at a date, according to the chronology which 
 we have adopted, seventy-three years later than the supposed destruc- 
 tion of Troy. It is, however, the religious history, rather than the 
 civil annals, ef the children of Abraham, that possesses the greatest 
 value and the deepest interest ; but as our limits forbid our enter- 
 ing upon a subject so comprehensive as the former, and the one can- 
 not be wholly separated from the other without the greatest violence, 
 we refer the reader to the Bible for full and satisfactory details of 
 the civil and religious polity of the Jews, contenting ourselves with 
 having given merely such a skeleton of Jewish annals, in connection 
 with profane history, as may serve to render the comparative chro- 
 nol jgy of the whole easy of comprehension. 
 
 a. 1 Sam. IT. 10, b. i. r.
 
 CHAP. III.] GRECIAN HISTORY 43} 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE UNCERTAIN PERIOD OF GRECIAN HISTORY: 
 
 EXTENDING FEOM THE CLOSE OK THE TROJAN WAR TO THE FIRST WAR WITH PERSIA 
 
 1183 TO 490 B. c. = 693 TEAKS. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. Introductory. 2. Consequences of the Trojan war. 3. THESSA' LIAN CON- 
 QUEST. [Epirus. Pin'dus. Peneus.] 4. BCEO'TIAN CONQUEST. JEo' LIAN MIGRATION. [Les'- 
 bos. 5 Doris.] 'RETURN OF TIIK HERACLI' ox. 0. Numbers and military character of the 
 Dorians. Passage of the Corinthian Gulf. [Corinthian Isthmus. Corinthian Gulf. Naupac'- 
 tus.] 7. Dorian conquest of the Peloponnesus. [Arcadia. Achaia.] Ionian and Dorian ml 
 grations. 8. Dorian invasion of At' tica. [Athens. Delphos.] Self-sacrifice of Codrus. 
 Government of At' tica. 9. [Lacdnia.] Its government. Lycur' gus. 10. Travels of Lycur/ 
 gus. [The Brahmins.] INSTITUTIONS OF LYCUR' ous. 11. Plutarch's account eenate- 
 assemblics division of lands. 12. Movable property. The currency. 13. Public tables. 
 Object of Spartan education, and aim of Lycur' gus. 14. Disputes about Lycur' gus. Hig' 
 supposed fate, [Delphos, Crete, and E' lis.] 15. The three classes of the Ionian population. 
 Treatment of the Helots. 16. The provincials. Their condition. 17. [Messenia. Ithome.] 
 FIRST MESSE' NIAN WAR. Results of the war to the Messenians. 18. Its influence on the 
 Spartans. SECOND MESSE' NIAN WAR. Aristom' enes. 19. The PoetTyrtae'us. [Corinth. Sic'- 
 yon.] Battle of the Pamisus. The Arcadians. 20. Results of the war. 21. Government of 
 Athens. DRA' co. 22. Severity of his laws. 23. Anarchy. LEGISLATION OF SOLON. Solon's 
 integrity. 24. Distresses of the people. The needy and the rich. 25. The policy of Solon, 
 Debtors lands of the poor imprisonment. Classification of the citizens. 26. Disabilities 
 and privileges of the fourth class. General policy of Solon's system. 27. The nine archons. 
 The Senate of Four Hundred. 28. Court of the Areop'agus. Its powers. Institutions of 
 Solon compared with the Spartan code. 29. Parly feuds. Pisis' tratus. 30. His usurpation 
 of power. Opposition to, and character of, his government. 31. The sons of Pisis' tratus. 
 Conspiracy of Harmodius and Aristogiton. 3'2. EXPTLSION OF THE PISIKTRATIDS. Intrigues 
 ofHip'pias. [Lyd'ia. Per' sia.] 33. The Grecian colonies conquered by Croe' sus by the 
 Persians. Application for aid. 34. ION' ic REVOLT. Athens and Euboe' a aid the lonians. 
 [Euboe'a, Sar'dis. Eph'esus.] Results of the Ionian war. [Miletus.] Designs of Darius. 
 
 COTEMPORARY HISTORY. I. PHCENI CIAN HISTORY. 1. Geography of Phoenicia. 2. Early his- 
 tory of Phoenicia. Political condition. Colonies. 3. Supposed circumnavigation of Africa. 
 4. Commercial relations. II. JEWISH HISTORY continuation of. 6. Accession of Saul to the 
 throne. Slaughter of the Am' monites. [Jabcsh Gil' ead. Gil' gal.] War with the Philistines. 7. 
 Wars with the surrounding nations. Saul's disobedience. 8. David his prowess. [Gath.] 
 Saul's jealousy of David. David's integrity. 9. Death of Saul. [Mount Gil' boa.] Division of the 
 kingdom between David and Ish' bosheth. [Hebron.] Union of the tribes. 10. Limited possess- 
 ions of the Israelites. [Tyre. Sidon. Joppa. Jerusalem.] David takes Jerusalem .11. His other 
 conquests. [Syria. Damascus. Rabbah.] Siege of Rabbah. Close of David's reign. 12. 
 Solomon. His wisdom fame commercial relations. 13. His impiety. Close of his reign. 
 14. Revolt of the ten tribes. Their subsequent history. 15. Rehoboam's reign over Judah. 
 Reign of Ahaz. Hezekiah. Signal overthrow of the Assyrians. 17. Corroborated by pro- 
 fane history. 18. Account given by Herod' otus. 19. Reigns of Manas' seh, A' mon, Josiah, 
 and Jeh6ahaz. 20. Reign of Jehoiakim of Jechoniah. 21. Reign of Hezekiah. Destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem. 22. Captivity of the Jews. 23 Rebuilding of Jerusalem. III. RO- 
 MAN HISTORY. 24. Founding of Rome. IV. PERSIAN HISTORY. 25. Dissolution of the As- 
 syrian empire. 26. Establishment of the empire of the Medes and Babylonians. Fira{ and
 
 44 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART L 
 
 second captivity of the Jews. 27. Other conquests of Nebucliadnez' zar. His war with the 
 Phoenicians. 28. With the Egyptians. Fulfilment of Ezekiel's prophecy. 29. Impiety and 
 pride of Nebuchaduez' zar. II is punishment. 30. Belshaz' zar's reign. Rise of the separate 
 kingdom of Media. Founding of the Persian empire. 31. Cyrus defeats Crve' sus subjugates 
 the Grecian colonies conquers Babylon. Prophecies relating to Babylon. 32. Remainder of 
 the reign of Cyrus. 33. Reign of Camby'ses. [Jupiter Am' mon.] 34. Accession of Darius 
 Hystas'pes. Revolt and destruction of Babylon. 35. Expedition against the Scythians. 
 [Scythia. River Don. Thrace.] 3(i. Other events in the history 1 of Darius. His aims, policy, 
 and government. 37. Extent of the Persran empire. 
 
 1. PASSING from the fabulous era of Grecian history, we enter 
 upon a period when the crude fictions of more than mortal heroes, 
 and demi-gods, begin to give place to the realities of human exist- 
 ence ; but still the vague, disputed, and often contradictory annals 
 on which we are obliged to rely, shed only an uncertain light around 
 us ; and even what we have gathered as the most reliable, in the 
 present chapter, perhaps cannot wholly be taken as undoubted his- 
 toric truth, especially in, chronological details. 
 
 2. The immediate consequences of the Trojan war, as represented 
 by Greek historians, were scarcely less disastrous to the victors than 
 to the vanquished. The return of the Grecian heroes to their coun- 
 try is represented by Homer and other early writers to have been 
 full of tragical adventures, while their long absence had encouraged 
 usurpers to seize many of their thrones ; and hence arose fierce wars 
 and intestine commotions, which greatly retarded the progress of 
 Grecian civilization. 
 
 3. Among these petty revolutions, however, no events of general 
 i. THESSA' LIAN interest occurred until about sixty years after the fall of 
 
 CONQUEST. Troy, when a people from Epirus, 1 passing over the 
 mountain chain of Pin' dus, 2 descended into the rich plains which lie 
 along the banks of the Peneus, 3 and finally conquered 81 the country, to 
 
 1. The country of Epirus, comprised in the present Turkish province of Albania, was at 
 the north-western extremity of Greece, lying along the coast of the Adriatic Sea, or Gulf of 
 Venice, and bounded on the north by Macedonia, and on the east by Macedonia and Thes'- 
 saly. The inhabitants in early times were probably Pelas'gic, but they cau hardly be consid- 
 ered ever to have belonged to the Hellenic race, or Grecians proper. Epirus Is principally 
 distinguished in Roman history as the country of the celebrated Pyr' rhus (see p. 149.) The 
 earliest oracle of Greece was that of Dodona in Epirus, but its exact locality is unknown. 
 There was another oracle of the same name in Thes' saly. (Map No. I.) 
 
 2. Pin' dus is the name of the mountain chain which separated Thes' saly from Epirus. 
 (Map No. I.) 
 
 3. Penius, the principal river of Thes' saly, rises in the Pin' dus mountains, and flowing in a 
 course generally east, passes through the vale of Tern' pe, and enrpties its waters into the Ther- 
 roaic Gulf, now the gulf of Salonica, a branch of the JE' geai Sea, or Archipelago. (Map 
 No. L) 
 
 a. About 1224 B. C.
 
 CHAP. III.] GRECIAN HISTORY. 45 
 
 which they gave the name of Thes'saly ; driving away most of the 
 inhabitants, and reducing those who remained to the condition of 
 serfs, or agricultural slaves. 
 
 4. The fugitives from Thes' saly, driven from their own country, 
 passed over into Bceotia, which they subdued after a long n . B(EO ' -n AN - 
 struggle, imitating their own conquerors in the disposal CONQUEST. - 
 of the inhabitants. The unsettled state of society occasioned by the 
 Thessalian and Boeotian conquests was the cause of collecting to- 
 gether various bands of fugitives, who, being joined by adventurers 
 from Peloponnesus, passed over into Asia, a constituting the JEolian 
 migration, so called from the race which took the prin- n i. MQ' LIAN 
 cipal share in it. They established their settlements in MIGRATION. 
 the vicinity of the ruins of Troy, and on the opposite island of Les'- 
 bos, 1 while on the main land they built many cities, which were com- 
 prised in twelve States, the whole of which formed the .ZEolian Con- 
 federacy. 
 
 5. About twenty years after the Thessalian conquest, the Dorians, 
 a Hellenic tribe, whose country, Doris, 3 a mountainous region, waa 
 on the south of Thes' saly, being probably harassed by their northern 
 neighbors, and desirous of a settlement in a more fertile territory, 
 commenced a migration to the Peloponnesus, accompanied by por 
 tions of other tribes, and led, as was asserted, by descendants of 
 Her' cules, who had formerly been driven into exile from the latter 
 country. This important event in Grecian history is 
 
 ' e J IV. RETURN 
 
 called the Return of tliellerad idee. The migration of the OF THE 
 Dorians was similar in its character to the return of the HKEACL1 DA 
 Israelites to Palestine, as they took with them their wives and chil- 
 dren, prepared for whatever fortune should award them. 
 
 6. The Dorians could muster about twenty thousand fighting men, 
 and although they were greatly inferior in numbers to the inhabit- 
 ants of the countries which they conquered, their superior military 
 tactics appear generally to have insured them an easy victory in the 
 
 1. Les' bos, one of the most celebrated of the Grecian islands, now called Mytilene, from its 
 principal city, lies on the coast of Asia Minor, north of the entrance to the Gulf of Smyrna. 
 Anciently, Les' bos contained nine flourishing cities, founded mostly by the ^Eolians. The 
 Les bians were notorious for their dissolute manners, while at the same time they were 
 distinguished for intellectual cultivation, and especially for poetry and music. (Map No. III.) 
 
 2. Doris, a small mountainous country, extending only about forty mile* in length, vraa 
 situated on the south of Thes' saly, from which it was separated by the range c.f mount CE' U. 
 The Dorians were the most powerful of the Hellenic tribes. (Map No. I.) 
 
 9. About 1040 B. C.
 
 46 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART! 
 
 open field. Twice, however, they were repelled in their attempts to 
 break through the Corinthian isthmus, 1 the key to Southern Greece, 
 when, warned by these misfortunes, they abandoned the guarded 
 isthmus, and crossing the Corinthian Gulf 2 froni Naupac' tus, 3 landed 
 safely on the north-western coast of the peninsula. (B. C. 1 1 04). 
 - 7. The whole of Peloponnesus, except the central and mountainous 
 district of Arcadia 4 and the coast province of Achaia, h was eventually 
 subdued, and apportioned among the conquerors, all the old inhab- 
 itants who remained in the country being reduced to an inferior con- 
 dition, like that of the Saxon serfs of England at the time of the 
 Norman conquest. Some of the inhabitants of the southern part 
 of the peninsula, however, uniting under valiant leaders, conquered 
 the province of Achaia, and expelled its Ionian inhabitants, many 
 of whom, joined by various bands of fugitives, sought a retreat on the 
 western coast of Asia Minor, south of the j?E61ian cities, where, in 
 
 1. The Corinthian Isthmus, between the Corinthian Gulf (now Gulf of Lepan' to) on the 
 north-west, and the Saron' ic Gulf (now Gulf of Athens, or ^Egina) on the south-east, unites the 
 Peloponnesus to the northern parts of Greece, or Greece Proper. The narrowest part of this 
 celebrated Isthmus is about six miles east from Corinth, where the distance across is about 
 five miles. The Isthmus is high and rocky, and many unsuccessful attempts have been made 
 to unite the waters on each side by a canal. The Isthmus derived much of its early celebrity 
 from the Isthmian games celebrated there in honor of Pahc' mon and Nep' tune. Ruins of 
 the temple of Nep' tune have been discovered at the port of Sense' nus, on the east side of the 
 Isthmus. (Map No. I.) 
 
 2. The Corinthian Gulf (now called the Gulf of Lepau' to) is an eastern arm of the Adriatic, 
 or Gulf of Venice, and lies principally between the coast of ancient Phocis on tne north, and 
 of Achaia on the south. The entrance to the gulf, between two ruined castles, the Roumfe ia 
 on the north, and the Morea on the south, is only about one mile across. Within, the waters 
 expand into a deep magnificent basin, stretching about seventy-eight miles to tho south-east, 
 and being, where widest, about twenty miles across. Near the mouth of this gulf was fought, 
 in the year 1570, one of the greatest naval battles of modern times. (Map No. I.) 
 
 3. Naupac' tus (now called Lepan' to) stands on a hill on the coast of Locris, about three and 
 a half miles from the ruined cast!-; of Rouraelia. It is said to have derived its name from the 
 circumstance of the Heraclidse having there constructed the fleet in which they crossed over 
 to the Peloponn6sus. (Naus, a ship, and Pego, or Pegnumi, to construct.) It was once a place 
 of considerable importance, but is now a ruinous town. (Map No. I.) 
 
 4 Arcadia, the central country of the Peloponnesus, and, next to Laconia, the largest of its 
 six provinces, is a mountainous region, somewhat similar to Switzerland, having a length and 
 breadth of about forty miles each. The most fertile part of the country was towards the south, 
 where were several delightful plains, and numerous vineyards. The Alpheus is the principal 
 river of Arcadia. Tegea and Mantinea were its principal cities. Its lakes are small, but 
 among them is the Stymphalus, of classic fame. The Arcadians, scarcely a genuine Greek 
 race, were a rude and pastoral people, deeply attached to music, and possessing a strong love 
 of freedom. (Map No. I.) 
 
 5. rfchaia, the most northern country of the Peloponnesus, extended along the Corinthian 
 Gulf, north of E' lis and Arcadia. It was a country of moderate fertility ; its coast was for the 
 toosi sart level, containing no good harbors, and exposed to inundations; and .ts streams 
 were of small size, many of them mere winter torrents, descending from the ridges of Arcadia. 
 Originally Achaia embraced the territory of Sic' yon, on the east, but the latter was finally 
 wrested from it by the Dorians. The Acha' ans are principally celebrated for being the orig- 
 inators of the celebrated Achaean league. (See p. 107.) (Map No. I.)
 
 CHAP. Ill] GRECIAN HISTORY 47 
 
 process of time, twelve Ionian cities were built, the whole of which 
 were united in the Ionian Confederacy, while their new country re- 
 ceived the name of Ionia. At a later period, bands of the Dorians 
 themselves, not content with their conquest of the Peloponnesus, 
 thronged to Asia Minor, where they peopled several cities on the 
 coast of Caria, south of Ionia ; so that the JEi' gean Sea was finally 
 circled by Grecian settlements, and its islands covered by them, 
 
 8. About the year 1068, the Dorians, impelled, as some assert, by 
 a general scarcity, the natural effect of long-protracted 'wars, invaded 
 At'tica, and encamped before the walls of Athens. 1 The chief of 
 the Dorian expedition, having consulted the oracle of Del' phos, 2 was 
 told that the Dorians would be successful so long as Codrus, the 
 Athenian king, was uninjured. The latter, being informed of the 
 answer of th- oracle, resolved to sacrifice himself for the good of 
 his country ; and going out of the gate, disguised in the garb of a 
 peasant, he provoked a quarrel with a Dorian soldier, and suffered 
 himself to be slain. On recognizing the body, the superstitious Do- 
 rians, deeming the war hopeless, withdrew from At' tica ; and the 
 Athenians, out of respect for the memory of Codrus, declared that 
 no one was worthy to succeed him, and abolished the form of roy- 
 alty altogether. a Magistrates called archons, however, differing little 
 from kings, were now appointed from the family of Codrus for life ; 
 after a long period these were exchanged b for archons appointed for 
 ten years, until, lastly, the yearly election of a senate of Archons 
 gave the final blow to royalty in Athens, and established an aristo- , 
 cratical government of the nobility. These successive encroachments 
 
 1. Jlthcns, one of the most famous cities of antiquity, is situated on the western side of the 
 At' tic peninsula, about five miles from the Sarori' ic Gulf, now the Gulf of JEgina.. Most of 
 the ancient city stood on the west side of a rocky eminence called the Acrop' olis, surrounded 
 by an extensive plain, and, at the time when it, had attained its greatest magnitude, was twenty 
 miles in circumference, and encompassed by a wall surmounted, at intervals, by strongly-for- 
 tified towers. The small river Cephis' sus, flowing south, on the west side of the city, and the 
 river His' sus, on the east, flowing south-west, inclosed it in a sort of peninsula; but both 
 streams lost themselves in the marshes south-west of the city. The waters of the His' sus were 
 mostly drawn off to irrigate the neighboring gardens, or to supply the artificial fountains of 
 Athens. (J\Iap No. I. See farther description, p. 5(54.) 
 
 2. Del' phos, or Del' phi, a small city of Phocis, situated on the southern declivity of Mount 
 Parnas' sus, forty-five miles north-west from Cor' inth, and eight and a half miles from the nearest 
 point of the Corinthian Gulf, was the seat of the most remarkable oracle of the ancient world. 
 Above Del' phi arose the two towering cliffs of Parnas' sus, while from the chasm between 
 them flowed the waters of the Castdlian spring, the source of poetical inspiration. Below lay 
 a nigged mountain, past which flowed the rapid stream Plis' tus ; while on both sides cf the 
 plain, where stood the little city, arose steep and almost iuaccessi le precipices. (Jtlap No. I.) 
 
 a. 1068 B. C. b. 752 B. C. c. 682 B. C.
 
 48 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAST! 
 
 on the royal prerogatives are almost the only events that fill the 
 meagre annals of Athens for several centuries.* 
 
 9. While these changes were occurring at Athens, Laconia, 1 whose 
 capital was Sparta, although often engaged in tedious wars with the 
 Ar' gives, 2 was gradually acquiring an ascendancy over the Dorian 
 states of the Peloponnesus. After the Heraclidse had obtained pos- 
 session of the sovereignty, two descendants of that family reigned 
 jointly at Lacedas' inon, but this divided rule served only to increase 
 the public confusion. Things remained, however, in this situation 
 until some time in the ninth century B. C., when Polydec' tes, one 
 of the kings, died without children. The reins of government then 
 fell into the hands of his brother Lycur' gus, but the latter soon re- 
 signed the crown to- the posthumous son of Polydec' tes, and, to 
 avoid the imputation of ambitious designs, went into voluntary exile, 
 although against the wishes of the best of his countrymen. 
 
 10. He is said to have visited many foreign lands, observing their 
 institutions and manners, and conversing with their sages to have 
 studied the Cretan laws of Minos to have been a disciple of the 
 Egyptian priests and even to have gathered wisdom from the Brah- 
 mins 9 of India, employing his time in maturing a plan for remedying 
 the evils which afflicted his native country. On his return he ap- 
 plied himself to the business of framing a new constitution for Sparta, 
 after consulting the Delphic oracle, which assured him that " the 
 constitution he should establish would be the most excellent in the 
 world." Having enlisted the aid of the most illustrious citizens, 
 
 v INSTITU- wno *k U P arms to support him, he procured the 
 
 TIONS OF enactment of a code of laws, by which the form of 
 
 LYCUR GUS. goyernment, the military discipline of the people, the 
 
 distribution of property, the education of the citizens, and the rules 
 
 1. Laconia, situated at the southern extremity of Greece, had Ar' golis and Arcadia on the 
 north, Messeiiia on the west, and the sea on the south and east. Its extent was about fifty 
 wiles from north to south, and from twenty to thirty from east to west. Its principal river was 
 (he Eurotas, on the western bank of which was Sparta, the capital ; and its mountains were 
 the ranges of Par' non on the north and east, and of Tayg' etus on the west, which rendered 
 the fertile valley, of the Eurotas, comprising the principal part of Laconia, exceedingly diffi- 
 cult of access. The two southern promontories of Laconia were Malea and Tamarium, now 
 sailed Si. Angelo and Matapan. ( Map No. I.) 
 
 2. The Ar' gives proper were inhabitants of the state and city of Ar'gos; but the word is 
 often applied by the poets to all the inhabitants of Greece. (Map No. I.) 
 
 3. The Brahmins were a class of Hindoo priests and philosophers, worshippers of the Indian 
 god Brama, the supposed creator of the world. They were the only persons who understood 
 the Sanscrit, the ancient language of Hindoostan, in which the sacred books of the Hindoo* 
 were written. 
 
 . rbirwall, i. p. 175.
 
 CHAP. Ill] GRECIAN HISTORY 49 
 
 of domestic life, were to be established on a new and immutable 
 basis. 
 
 1 1. The account which Plutarch gives of these regulations asserts 
 that Lycur' gus first established a senate of thirty members, chosen 
 for life, the two kings being of the number, and that the former 
 hared the power of the latter. There were also to be assemblies of 
 the people, who were to have no right to propose any subject of de- 
 bate, but were only authorized to ratify or reject what might be 
 proposed to them by the senate and the kings. Lycur' gus next 
 made a new division of the lands, for here he found great inequality 
 existing, as there were many indigent persons who had no lands, and 
 the wealth was centred in the hands of a few. 
 
 12. In order farther to remove inequalities among the citizens, 
 and, as far as possible, to place all on the same level, he next at- 
 tempted to divide the movable property ; but as this measure met 
 with great opposition, he had recourse to another method for accom- 
 plishing the same object. He stopped the currency of gold and sil- 
 ver coin, and permitted iron money only to be used ; and, to a great 
 quantity and weight of this he assigned but a small value, so that, 
 to remove one or two hundred dollars of this money would require 
 a yoke of oxen. This regulation put an end to many kinds of in- 
 justice, for " Who," says Plutarch, " would steal or take a bribe ; 
 who would defraud or rob, when he could not conceal the booty, 
 when he could neither be dignified by the possession of it, nor be 
 served by its use ?" Unprofitable and superfluous? arts were excluded, 
 trade with foreign States was abandoned ; and luxury, losing its 
 sources of support, died away of itself. 
 
 13. To promote sobriety, all the citizens, and even the kings, ate 
 at public tables, and of the plainest fare ; each individual being ob- 
 liged to bring in, monthly, certain provisions for the common use. 
 This regulation was designed, moreover, to furnish a kind of school, 
 where the young might be instructed by the conversation of their 
 eldors. From his birth, every Spartan belonged to the State ; 
 sickly and deformed infants were destroyed, those only being thought 
 worthy to live who promised to become useful members of the com- 
 munity. The object of Spartan education was to render children 
 expert in manly exercises, hardy, and courageous ; and the principal 
 aim of Lycur' gus appears to have been to render the Spartans a na- 
 tion of warriors, although not of conquerors, for he dreaded the ef- 
 fects of an extension of territory beyond the boundaries of Laconia. 
 

 
 50 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAET I. 
 
 14. Lycur' gus left none of his laws in writing; and some of the 
 regulations attributed to him were probably the results of subsequent 
 legislation. It is even a disputed point in what age Lycur' gus 
 lived, some making him cotemporary with the HeracHdse, and others 
 dating his era four hundred years later, after the close of the Messe- 
 nian wars; but the great mass of evidence fixes his legislation in 
 the ninth century before the Christian era. It is said that after he 
 had completed his work, he set out on a journey, having previously 
 bound the Spartans by an oath to make no change in his laws until 
 his return, and, that they might never be released from the obliga- 
 tion, he voluntarily banished himself forever from his country, 
 and died in a foreign land. The place and manner of his death 
 are unknown, but Del' phos, Crete, and E' Ms, 1 all claimed his 
 tomb. 
 
 15. There were three classes among the population of Laconia : 
 the Dorians of Sparta ; their serfs, the Helots ; and the people of 
 the provincial districts.* The former, properly called Spartans, 
 were the ruling caste, who neither employed themselves in agricul- 
 ture nor commerce, nor practiced any mechanical art. b The Helots 
 were slaves, who, as is generally believed, on account of their obsti- 
 nate resistance in some early wars, and subsequent conquest, had been 
 reduced to the most degrading servitude. They were always viewed 
 with suspicion by their masters, and although some were occasionally 
 emancipated, yet measures of the most atrocious violence were often 
 adopted to reduce the strength and break the spirits of the bravest 
 and most aspiring, who might threaten an insurrection. 
 
 16. The people of the provincial districts were a mixed race, com- 
 posed partly of strangers who had accompanied the Dorians, and 
 aided them in their conquest, and partly of the old inhabitants of 
 the country who had submitted to the conquerors. The provincials 
 were under the control of the Spartan government, in the adminis- 
 tration of which they had no share, and the lands which they held 
 were tributary to the State ; they formed an important part of the 
 
 1. Del' phos and Cr6te have been described. The summit of Mount I'da, in CnSte, was 
 sacred to Jupiter. Here also Cyb' ele, the " mother of the gods," was worshipped. (The 
 Mount I' da mentioned by the poets was in the vicinity of ancient Troy.) E' lis was a district 
 of the Peloponnesus, lying west of Arcadia. At Olym'pia, situated on the river Alpheus, in 
 this district, the celebrated Olympic games were celebrated in honor of Jupiter. ' lis, the 
 capital of the district, was situated on the river Peneus, thirty miles north-west from Olym' pia. 
 (Map Xo. L) 
 
 a. Thirwall, i. 129. b. Hill's Institutions of Anr 'ent Greece, p. 153.
 
 CHAP. Ill] GRECIAN HISTORY. 51 
 
 military force of (he country, and, on the whole, had little to com- 
 plain of but the want of political independence. 
 
 17. During a century or more after the time of Lycur' gus, the 
 Spartans remained at peace with their neighbors, except a few petty 
 contests on the side of Arcadia and Ar' gos. Jealousies, however, 
 arose between the Spartans and their brethren of Messenia, 1 which, 
 stimulated by insults and injuries on both sides, gave rise to the first 
 Messenian war, 743 years before the Christian era. VI . j-n-sr MES . 
 After a conflict of twenty years, the Messenians were SENIAN WAR. 
 obliged to abandon their principal fortress of Ithome, 2 and to leave 
 their rich fields in the possession of the conquerors. A few of the 
 inhabitants withdrew into foreign lands, but the principal citizens 
 took refuge in Ar' gos and Arcadia ; while those who remained were 
 reduced to a condition little better than that of the Laconian He- 
 lots, being obliged to pay to their masters one-half of the fruits of 
 the land which they were allowed to till. 
 
 18. The Messenian war exerted a great influence on the character 
 and subsequent history of the Spartans, as it gave a full development 
 to the warlike spirit which the institutions of Lycur' gus were so 
 well calculated to encourage. The Spartans, stern and unyielding 
 in their exactions from the conquered, again drove the Messenians 
 to revolt (685 B. C.), thirty-nine years after the termi- vn SECOND 
 nation of the former war. The latter found a worthy MESSENIAN 
 leader in Aristom' enes, whose valor in the first battle 
 
 struck fear into his enemies, and inspired his countrymen with con- 
 fidence. The Spartans, sending to the Delphic oracle for advice, 
 received the mortifying response, that they must seek a leader from 
 the Athenians, between whose country and Laconia there had been 
 no intercourse for several centuries. 
 
 19. The Athenians, fearing to disobey the oracle, and reluctant 
 to further the cause of the Spartans, sent to the latter the poet Tyr- 
 tse' us, who had never been distinguished as a warrior. His patriotic 
 odes, however, roused the spirit of the Spartans, who, obtaining Do- 
 rian auxiliaries from Corinth, 3 commenced the war anew. The 
 
 1. Messenia was a country west of Laconia, and at the south-western extremity of the 
 Peloponnesus. It was separated from E' lis on the north by the river Neda, and from Arcadia 
 tnd Laconia by mountain ranges. The Pamisus was its principal river. On the western coas' 
 was the deep bay of Py'lus, which has become celebrated in modern history under the name 
 of JVararino (seep-517) the only perfect harbor of Southern Greece. (Map No. I.) 
 
 2. It/idme was in Central Messenia, on a high hill on the western side of the vale of the 
 Pamisus. (Map No. I.) 
 
 3. Cor' inth was situated near the isthmus of the same name, between the Gulf of Lepan' to
 
 52 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART! 
 
 Messenians, on the other hand, were aided by forces from Sic' yen 1 
 and Ar' gos, Arcadia and E' lis, and, in a great battle near the mouth 
 of the Paniisus, 2 in Messenia, they completely routed their enemies. 
 In the third year of the war the Arcadian auxiliaries of the Messe- 
 nians, seduced by bribes, deserted them in the heat of battle, and 
 gave the victory to the Spartans. 
 
 20. The war continued, with various success, seventeen years, 
 throughout the whole of which period Aristom' enes distinguished 
 himself by many noble exploits ; but all his efforts to save his 
 country were ineffectual. A second time Sparta conquered (668), 
 and the yoke appeared to be fixed on Messenia forever. Thence- 
 forward the growing power and reputation of Sparta seemed des- 
 tined to undisputed preeminence, not only in the Peloponnesus, but 
 throughout all Greece. 
 
 21. At the period of the close of the second Messenian war, 
 Athens, as previously stated, was under the aristocratical govern- 
 ment of a senate of archons-magistrates chosen by the nobility from 
 their own order, -who possessed all authority, religious, civil, and 
 military. The Athenian populace not only enjoyed no political 
 rights, but was reduced to a condition but little above servitude ; 
 and it appears to have been owing to the anarchy that arose from 
 ruinous extortions of the nobles on the one hand, and the resistance 
 
 of the people on the other, that Draco, the most eminent 
 
 VIII. DEA CO. ,,.,. 
 
 or the nobility, was chosen to prepare the first written 
 code of laws for the government of the State. (622 B. C.) 
 
 ou the north-west, and of ^Egina on the south-east, two miles from the nearest point of the 
 former, and seven from the latter. The site of the town was at the north foot of a steep rock 
 called the Acrop' olis of Cor' inth, 1,336 feet in height, the summit of which is now, as in an- 
 tiquity, occupied as a fortress. This eminence may be distinctly seen from Athens, from which 
 it is distant no less than forty-four miles in a direct line. Cor' inth was a large and populous 
 city when St. Paul preached the Gopel there for a year and six months. (Acts, xviii. 11.) 
 The present town, though of considerable extent, is thinly peopled. The only Grecian ruin 
 now to be seen there is a dilapidated Doric temple. (JVap No. I.) 
 
 "Where is thy grandeur Corinth ?" Shrunk from sight, 
 Thy ancient treasures, and thy rampart's height, 
 Thy god-like fanes and palaces ! Oh, where 
 Thy mighty myriads and majestic fair ! 
 Relentless war has poured around thy wall, 
 And hardly spared the traces of thy fall !" 
 
 1. Sic' yon, once a great and flourishing city, was situated near the Gulf of Lepan' to, about 
 
 ten miles north-west from Cor' inth. It boasted a high antiquity, and by some was considered 
 
 older than Ar'gos. The ruins of the ancient town are still to be seen near the small modern 
 
 Tillage of Basilico. (Map No. I.) 
 
 . 2. Tlit Pamisvf (now called the P/motra) was the principal river of Messenia. (Map No I.>
 
 CHAP III.] GRECIAN HISTORY. 53 
 
 22 The seven ty of his laws has made his name proverbial. Their 
 character was thought to be happily expressed, when one said of them 
 that they were written, not in ink, but in blood. He attached the 
 same penalty to petty thefts as to sacrilege and murder, saying that 
 the former offences deserved death, and he had no greater punishment 
 for the latter. It is thought that the nobles suggested the severity 
 of the laws of Draco, thinking they would be a convenient instru- 
 ment of oppression in their hands ; but human nature revolted 
 against such legalized butchery, and the system of Draco soon fell 
 into disuse. 
 
 23. The commonwealth was finally reduced to complete anarchy, 
 without law, or order, or system in the administration of justice, 
 when Solon, who was descended from the line of Codrus, was raised 
 to the office of first magistrate (594 B. C.), and, by the consent of all 
 parties, was chosen as a general arbiter of their differ- ^ L KQISLA- 
 ences, and invested with full authority to frame a new TION OF 
 constitution and a new code of laws. The almost unlim- 
 ited power conferred upon Solon might easily have been perverted 
 to dangerous purposes, and many advised him to make himself ab- 
 solute master of the State, and at once quell the numerous factions 
 by the exercise of royal authority. And, indeed, such a usurpation 
 would probably have been acquiesced in with but little opposition, 
 as offering, for a time at least, a refuge from evils that had already 
 become too intolerable to be borne. But the stern integrity of Solon 
 was proof against all temptations to swerve from the path of honor, , 
 and betray the sacred trust reposed in him. 
 
 24. The grievous exactions of the ruling orders had already re- 
 duced the laboring classes, generally, to poverty and abject depend- 
 ence : all whom bad times or casual disasters had compelled to bor- 
 row, had been impoverished by the high rates of interest ;' and 
 thousands of insolvent debtors had been sold into slavery, to satisfy the 
 demands of relentless creditors. In this situation of affairs the most 
 violent or needy demanded a new distribution of property, as had been 
 done in Sparta ; while the rich would have held on to all the fruits 
 of their extortion and tyranny. 
 
 25. But Solon, pursuing a middle course between these extremes, 
 relieved the debtor by reducing the rate of interest, and enhancing 
 the value of the currency, so that three silver minse paid an indebt- 
 edness of four : he also relieved the lands of the poor from all in- 
 cumbrances ; he abolished imprisonment for debt: he restored to
 
 54 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAKT L 
 
 liberty thoso whom poverty had placed in bondage ; and he repealed 
 all the laws of Draco, except those against murder. He next ar- 
 ranged all the citizens in four classes, according to their landed 
 property ; the first class alone being eligible to the highest civil 
 offices and the highest commands in the army, while only a few of 
 the lower offices were open to the second and third classes. The 
 latter classes, however, were partially relieved from taxation ; but in 
 war they were required to equip themselves for military service, the 
 one as cavalry, and the other as heavy armed infantry. 
 
 26. Individuals of the fourth class were excluded from all offices, 
 but in return they were wholly exempt from taxation ; and yet they 
 had a share in the government, for they were permitted to take part 
 in tho popular assemblies, which had the right of confirming or reject- 
 ing new laws, and of electing the magistrates ; and here their votes 
 counted the same as those of the wealthiest of the nobles. In war 
 they served only as light troops, or manned the fleets. Thus the 
 system of Solon, being based primarily on property qualifications, 
 provided for all the freemen ; and its aim was to bestow upon the 
 commonalty such a share in the government as would enable it to 
 protect itself, and to give to the wealthy what was necessary for re- 
 taining their dignity ; throwing the burdens of government on the 
 latter, and not excluding the former from its benefits. 
 
 27. Solon retained the magistracy of the nine archons, but with 
 abridged powers ; and, as a guard against democratical extravagance 
 on the one hand, and a check to undue assumptions of power on 
 the other, he instituted a Senate of Four Hundred, and founded or 
 remodelled the court of the Areop' agus. The Senate consisted of 
 members selected by lot from the first three classes ; but none could 
 be appointed to this honor until they had undergone a strict ex- 
 amination into their past lives, characters, and qualifications. The 
 Senate was to be consulted by tho archons in all important mat- 
 ters, and was to prepare all new laws and regulations, which were 
 to be submitted to the votes of the assembly of the people. 
 
 28. The court of the Areop' agus, which held its sittings on an 
 eminence on the western side of the Athenian Acrop' olis, was com- 
 posed of persons who had hold the office of archon, and was the 
 supreme tribunal in all capital cases. It exercised, also, a general 
 superintendence over education, morals, and religion ; and it could 
 suspend a resolution of the public assembly which it deemed fraught 
 with folly or injustice, until it had undergone a reconsideration.
 
 CHAP. IIL1 GRECIAN HISTORY. 55 
 
 Such is a brief outline of the institutions of Solon, which exhibit a 
 mingling of aristocracy and democracy, well adapted to the char- 
 acter of the ago, and the circumstances of the people. They exhibit 
 less control over the pursuits and domestic habits of individuals than 
 the Spartan code, but at the same time they show a far greater re 
 gard for the public morals. 
 
 29. The legislation of Solon was not followed by the total extinc- 
 tion of party spirit, and ere long the three prominent factions in the 
 State renewed their ancient feuds. Pisis' tratus, a wealthy kinsman 
 of Solon, who had supported the measures of the latter by his elo- 
 quence and military talents, had the art to gain the favor of the 
 populace, and constitute himself their leader. When his schemes 
 were ripe for execution, he one day drove into the public square, 
 his mules and himself disfigured with recent wounds inflicted by his 
 own hands, but which he induced the multitude to believe had been 
 received from a band of assassins, whom his enemies, the nobility, 
 had hired to murder the friend of the people. An assembly was 
 immediately convoked by his partizans, and the indignant crowd 
 voted him a guard of fifty citizens to protect his person, although 
 warned by Solon of the pernicious consequences of such a measure. 
 
 30. Pisis' tratus took advantage of the popular favor which he had 
 gained, and, arming a larger body, seized the Acrop' olis, and made 
 himself master of Athens. But the usurper, satisfied with the power 
 of quietly directing the administration of government, made no 
 changes in the constitution, and suffered the laws to take their or- 
 dinary course. The government of Pisis' tratus was probably a less 
 evil than would have resulted from the success of either of the other 
 factions ; and in this light Solon appears to have viewed it, although 
 he did not hesitate to denounce the usurpation ; and, rejecting the 
 usurper's oifers of favor, it is said that he went into voluntary exile, 
 and died at Sal' amis. 1 (559 B. C.) Twice was Pisis' tratus driven 
 from Athens by a coalition of the opposing factions ; but as the latter 
 were almost constantly at variance with each other, he finally returned 
 at the head of an army, and regained the sovereignty, which he held 
 until his death. Although he tightened the reins of government, yet 
 he ruled with equity and mildness, courting popularity by a generous 
 treatment of the poorer citizens, and gratifying the national pride 
 by adorning Athens with many useful and magnificent works. 
 
 
 
 1. Sal' amis is an island in the Gulf of ^Egina, near the coast of At' tica, and twelve or fifteen 
 miles south-west from Athens. (See Map No. I.)
 
 56 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAKT JL 
 
 31. On the deatli of Pisis tratus (528 B. C.), his sons Hip'pias, 
 Ilippar' chus, and Thes' salus succeeded to his power, and for some 
 years'trod in his steps and prosecuted his plans, only taking care to 
 fill the most important offices with their friends, and keeping a stand- 
 ing force of foreign mercenaries to secure themselves from hostile 
 factions and popular outbreaks. After a joint reign of fourteen 
 years a conspiracy was planned to free At' tica from their rule, at 
 the head of which were two young Athenians, Harmodius and Aris- 
 togeiton, whose personal resentment had been provoked by an atro- 
 cious insult to the family of the former. Hippar' chus was killed, 
 but the two young Athenians also lost their lives in the struggle. 
 
 32. Hip' pias, the elder of the ruling brothers, now that he had 
 injuries to avenge, became a cruel tyrant, and thus alienated the af- 
 fections of the people. The latter finally obtained aid from the 
 
 Spartans, and the family of the Pisistratids was driven 
 OF THE from Athens, never to regain its former ascendency ; al- 
 PISISTRATIDS. Chough k u t a f ew y ears a ft fcr its expulsion, Sparta, re- 
 penting the course she had taken, made an ineffectual effort to restore 
 Hip' pias to the throne of which she had aided in depriving him. 
 Hip' pias then fled to the court of Artapanes, governor of Lyd' ia/ 
 then a part of the Persian dominions of Darius, where his intrigues 
 greatly contributed to the opening of a war between Greece and 
 Persia. 3 
 
 33. Nearly half a century before this time, Croe'sus, 3 king of 
 Lyd' ia, had conquered the Grecian colonies on the coast of Asia 
 Minor ; but he ruled them with great mildness, leaving them their 
 political institutions undisturbed, and requiring of them little more 
 than the payment of a moderate tribute. A few years later they 
 experienced a change of masters, and, together with Lyd' ia, fell, by 
 conquest, under the dominion of the Persians. But they were still 
 allowed to retain their own form of government by paying tribute to 
 their conquerors ; yet they seized every opportunity to deliver them- 
 
 1. Lyd' ia was a country on the coast of Asia Minor, having Mys' ia on the north, Phryg' ia 
 on the east, and Caria on the south. The Grecian colony of Ionia was embraced within Lyd' ia 
 and the northern part of Caria, extending along the coast. (Map No. IV.) 
 
 2. Modern Persia, a large country of Central Asia, extends from the Caspian Sea on the 
 uorth, to the Persian Gulf on the south, having Asiatic Turkey on the west, and the provinces 
 Df Afghanistan and Beloochistan on the east. For the greatest extent of the Persian empire, 
 which was during the reign of Darius Hystas'pes, see the Map No. V. 
 
 3. era' sus, the last king of Lyd' ia, was famed for his riches and munificence. Herod' otus 
 (i. 30-33, and 36, &c.) and Plutarch (life of Solon) give a very interesting account of the visi. 
 of the Athenian Solon to the court of that prince, who greatly prided himself on his riches, 
 and vainly thought hi nself the happiest of mankind.
 
 CHAP. IIL] GRECIAN HISTORY. 57 
 
 selves from this species of thraldom, and finally the lonians sought 
 the aid of their Grecian countrymen, making application, first tc 
 Sparta, but in vain, and next (B. C. 500) to Athens, and the Grecian 
 islands of the ^E'gean Sea. 
 
 34. The Athenians, irritated at this time by a haughty demand 
 of the Persian monarch, that they should restore Hip' pias to the 
 throne, and regarding Darius as an avowed enemy, gladly took part 
 with the lonians, and, in connection with Euboe' a, 1 fur- X r. TOXIC 
 nished their Asiatic countrymen with a fleet of twenty- BEVOLT. 
 five sail. The allied Grecians were at first successful, ravaging 
 Lyd' ia, and burning Sar' dis, 2 its capital ; but in the end they were 
 defeated near Eph' esus ; 3 the commanders quarrelled with each other ; 
 and the Athenians sailed home, leaving the Asiatic Greeks divided 
 among themselves, to contend alone against the whole power of Per- 
 sia. Still the Ionian war was protracted six years, when it was ter- 
 minated by the storming of Miletus, 4 (B. C. 494,) the capital of the 
 Ionian confederacy. The surviving inhabitants of this beautiful 
 
 1. Eubce' a, (now called Neg' ropont',) a long, narrow, and irregular island of the JE' gean 
 Sea, (now Grecian Archipel' ago,) extended one hundred and ten miles along the eastern coast 
 of Bceotia and At' tica, from which it was separated by the channel of Euripus, which, at one 
 place, was only forty yards across. The chief town of the island was Chal' cis, (now Neg' ro- 
 pont',) on the western coast. (Map No. I.) 
 
 '2. Sar' dis, the ancient capital of Lyd' ia, was situated on both sides of the river Pactolus, a 
 southern branch of the Her' mus, seventy miles east from Smyr' na. In the annals of Chris- 
 tianity, Sar' dis is distinguished as having been one of the seven churches of Asia. A mis- 
 erable village, called Sari, is now found on the site of this ancient city. (Map No. IV.) 
 
 3. Eph' esus, one of the Ionian cities, was situated on the south side, and near the mcruth, 
 of the small river Cays' ter, on the coast of Lyd' ia, thirty-eight miles south from Smyr' na, 
 Here stood a noble temple, erected in honor of the goddess Diana ; but an obscure individ- 
 ual, of the name of Heros' tratus, burned it, in order to perpetuate his memory by the infamous 
 notoriety which such an act would give him ! The grand council of Ionia endeavored to dis- 
 appoint the incendiary by passing a decree that his name should not be mentioned, but it was 
 divulged by the historian Theopom' pus. A new temple was subsequently built, far surpassing 
 the first, and ranked among the seven wonders of the world. When St. Paul visited Eph-' esus, 
 still the cry was, " Great is Diana of the Ephesians" (Acts, xix. 28, 34) ; but the worship of the 
 goddess was doomed speedily to decline, and here St. Paul founded the principal of the Asiatic 
 churches. But war, the ravages of earthquakes, and the desolating hand of time, have com- 
 pleted the ruin of this once famous city. " The glorious pomp of its heathen worship is no 
 longer remembered ; and Christianity, which was there nursed by apostles, and fostered by 
 general councils, until it increased to fulness of stature, barely lingers on in an existence 
 hardly visible." (Map No. IV.) 
 
 4. Miletus, the most distinguished of the Ionian cities of Asia Minor, and once greatly cele- 
 brated for its population, wealth, commerce, and civilization, was situated in the province Of 
 C&ria, on the southern shore of the bay into which the small river Lat' mus emptied, and about 
 thirty-five miles south from Eph' esus. St. Paul appears to have sojourned here a few days ; 
 and here he assembled the elders of the Ephesian church, and delivered unto them an affec- 
 tionate farewell address. (Acts, xx. 15, 38.) Miletus is now a deserted place, but contains the 
 ruins of a few once magnificent structures, and Btill jears the name of Palat, or the Palace** 
 iMap No. IV.) 
 
 C*
 
 56 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAET I 
 
 and opulent city were carried away by order of Darius, and settled 
 near the mouth of the Tigris. Darius next turned his resentment 
 against the Athenians and Euboe' ans, who had aided the Ionian 
 revolt, meditating, however, nothing less than the conquest of all 
 Greece (B. C. 490). The events of the " Persian War" which fol- 
 lowed, will next be narrated, after we shall have given some general 
 views of cotemporary history, during the period which we have passed 
 over in the preceding part of the present chapter. 
 
 COTEMPORARY HISTORY : 1184 to 490 B. C. 
 
 [I. PHOENICIAN HISTORY.] 1. The name Phoenicia was applied to 
 the north-western part of Palestine and part of the coast of Syria, 
 embracing the country from Mount Carmel, north, along the coast, 
 to the city and island Aradus, an extent of about a hundred and 
 fifty miles. The mountain ranges of Lib' anus and Anti-Lib' anus 
 formed the utmost extent of the Phoenician territory on the east. 
 The surface of the country was in general sandy and hilly, and poorly 
 adapted to agriculture ; but the coast abounded in good harbors, 
 and the fisheries were excellent, while the mountain ranges in the 
 interior afforded, in their cedar forests, a rich supply of timber for 
 naval and other purposes. 
 
 2. At a remote period the Pho3nicians, who are supposed to have 
 been of the race of the Canaanites, a were a commercial people, but 
 the loss of the Phoenician annals renders it difficult to investigate 
 their early history. Their principal towns were probably indepen- 
 dent States, with small adjacent territories, like the little Grecian 
 republics ; and no political union appears to have existed among 
 them, except that arising from a common religious worship, until 
 the time of the Persians. The Pho3nicians occupied Sicily before 
 the Greeks ; they made themselves masters of Cy' prus, and they 
 formed settlements on the northern coast of Africa ; but the chief 
 seat of their early colonial establishments was the southern part of 
 Spain, whence they are said to have extended their voyages to Brit- 
 ain, and even to the coasts of the Baltic. 
 
 3. It is also related by Herod' otus, (B. IV. 42,) that at an epoch 
 which is believed to correspond to the year 604 before the Chris- 
 tian era, a fleet fitted out by Pharaoh Necho, king of Egypt, but 
 manned and commanded by Phoenicians, departed from a port on 
 
 a. Niebuhr's Loct, on Ancient Hist. i. 113.
 
 CHAP. IIL] JEWISH HISTORY. 59 
 
 the Red Sea, and sailing south, and keeping always to the right, 
 doubled the southern promontory of Africa, and, after a voyage of 
 three years returned to Egypt by the way of the straits of Gibral- 
 tar and the Mediterranean. Herod' otus farther mentions that the 
 navigators asserted that, in sailing round Africa, they had the sun 
 on their right hand, or to the north, a circumstance which, Herod'- 
 otus says, to him seemed incredible, but which we know must have 
 been the case if the voyage was actually performed, because southern 
 Africa lies south of the equatorial region. Thus was Africa prob- 
 ably circumnavigated by the Phoenicians, more than two thousand 
 years before the Portuguese voyage of De Gama. 
 
 4. The Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon had friendly connections 
 with the Hebrews ; and through the Red Sea, and by the way of 
 the Arabian desert, and across the wilderness of Syria, they for a 
 long time carried on the commercial exchanges between Europe 
 and Asia. From the time of the great commotions in Western 
 Asia, which caused the downfall of so many independent States, and 
 their subjection to the monarchs of Babylon and Persia, the com- 
 mercial prosperity of the Phoenicians began to decline ; but it was 
 the founding of Alexandria by the Macedonian conqueror, which 
 proved the final ruin of the Phoenician cities. 
 
 [II. JEWISH HISTORY.] 5. The history of the Jews, which ha; 
 been brought down to the accession of Saul as king of Israel, pre 
 sents to the historian a fairer field than that of the Phoenicians 
 and is now to be continued down to the return of the Jews froi 
 their Babylonian captivity, and the completion of the rebuilding o 
 the second temple of Jerusalem. 
 
 6. Saul, soon after his accession to the throne, (B. C. 1110,) 
 which was about the time of the Dorian emigration, or the " Return 
 of the Heraclidae" to the Peloponnesus, gave proof of his military 
 qualifications by a signal slaughter of the Ammonites, who had laid 
 siege to Jabesh-Gil'ead. 1 In a solemn assembly of the tribes at 
 Gil' gal,* the people renewed their allegiance to their new sovereign, 
 and there Samuel resigned his office. During a war with the Phil- 
 istines soon after, Saul ventured to ask counsel of the Lord, and 
 assuming the sacerdotal functions, he offered the solemn sacrifice, 
 
 1. Jdbesh-Oil' ead was a town on the east side of the Jordan, in Gil' ead. (Map No. VI.) 
 
 2. The Oil' gal here mentioned appears to have been a short distance west cr nr-th-weaJ 
 of Shechem, near the country of the Philistines. (Map No. VI.)
 
 60 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART I 
 
 a duty which the sacred law assigned to the high-priest alone For 
 this violation of the law the divine displeasure was denounced against 
 him by the prophet Samuel, who declared to him that his kingdom 
 should not continue ; and so disheartened were the people, that the 
 army of Saul soon dwindled away to six hundred men ; but by the 
 daring valor of Jonathan, his son, a panic was spread among the 
 Philistines, and their whole army was easily overthrown. 
 
 7. During several years after this -victory, Saul carried on a suc- 
 cessful warfare against the different nations that harassed the fron- 
 tiers of his kingdom ; but when Agag, the king of the Anialekites, 
 had fallen into his hands, in violation of the divine command he 
 spared his life, and brought away from the vanquished enemy a 
 vast booty of cattle. For not fulfilling his commission from the 
 Lord, he was declared unfit to be the founder of a race of kings, and 
 
 ..was told that the sovereign power should be transferred to another 
 family. i 
 
 8. David, of the tribe of Benjamin, then a mere youth, was di- 
 vinely chosen for the succession, being secretly anointed for that 
 purpose by Samuel. In the next war with the Philistines he dis- 
 tinguished himself by slaying their champion, the gigantic Goliath 
 of Gath. 1 Saul, however, looked upon David with a jealousy bor- 
 dering on madness, and made frequent attempts to take his life ; 
 but the latter sought safety in exile, and for a while took up his 
 residence in a Philistine city. Returning to Palestine, he sought 
 refuge from the anger of Saul in the dens and caves of the moun- 
 tains ; and twice, while Saul was pursuing him, had it in his power 
 to destroy his persecutor, but he would not " lift his hand against 
 the Lord's anointed." 
 
 9. After the death of Samuel, the favor of the Lord was wholly 
 withdrawn from Saul ; and when the Philistines invaded the country 
 with a numerous army, several of the sons of Saul 'were slain in 
 battle on Mount Gil' boa, 2 and Saul himself, to avoid falling alive 
 into the hands of his enemies, fell upon his own sword. On the 
 death of Saul, David repaired to Hebron, 1 and, with the support of 
 the tribe of Judah, asserted his title to the throne ; but the north- 
 ern tribes attached themselves to Ishbosheth, a son of Saul ; " and 
 
 1. GatA, a town of the Philistines, was about twenty-five miles west from Jerusalem. (Map 
 Ho. VI.) 
 
 2. Mount Oil' boa is in the southern part of Galilee, a short distance west of the Jordan 
 (Map No. VI.) 
 
 3. Hebron, a town of Judah, was about twenty miles south of Jerusalem. (Map No. VI.)
 
 Cnxr III.] JEWISH HISTORY. 61 
 
 there was long war between the house of Saul and the house of 
 David ; Imt David waxed stronger and stronger, and the house of 
 Saul waxed weaker and weaker." The death of Ishbosheth, who 
 fell by the hands of two of his own guards, removed the obstacles 
 in the way of a union of the tribes, and at Hebron David was pub- 
 licly recognized king of all Israel. 
 
 10, After all the conquests which the Israelites had made in the 
 land of promise, there still remained large portions of Palestine of 
 which they had not yet gained possession. On the south-west were 
 the strongholds and cities of the Philistines ; and bordering on the 
 north-western coast was the country of the Phoenicians, whose two 
 chief cities were Tyre 1 and Sidon. 2 Joppa 3 was the only Mediter- 
 ranean port open to the Israelites. Even in the very heart of Pal- 
 estine, the Jeb' usites, "supposed to have been a tribe of the wan 
 dering Hyk' sos, possessed the stronghold of Jebus, or Jerusalem, 4 
 on Mount Zion, after David had become king of " all Israel," But 
 
 1. Tyre, long the principal city of Phoenicia, and the commercial emporium of the ancient 
 world, stood on a small island on the south-eastern or Palestine coast of the Mediterranean, 
 about forty miles north-east from Mount Carmel. The modern town of Siir, (Soor,) with fifteen 
 hundred inhabitants, occupies a site opposite the ancient city. The prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, 
 and Ezekiel, represent Tyre as a city of unrivalled wealth, " a mart of nations," whose " mer- 
 chants were princes, and her traffickers the honorable of the earth." (Isaiah, xxiii. 3, 8.) 
 After the destruction of the old city by Nebuchadnezzar, New Tyre enjoyed a considerable de- 
 gree of celebrity and commercial prosperity ; but the founding of Alexandria, by diverting the 
 commerce that had formerly centred at Tyre into a new channel, gave her an irreparable btow, 
 and she gradually declined, till, in the language of prophecy, her palaces have been levelled 
 with the dust, and she has become " a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea." 
 (Ezek. xx vi. 5.) The prophet Ezekiel has described, in magnificent terms, the glory and the 
 riches of Tyre. $ee Ezek. xxvii.) ( Map No. VI.) 
 
 2. Sidon, (now called Said,) was situated near the sea, twenty-two miles north of Tyre, of 
 which it was the parent city, and by which it was early eclipsed in commercial importance. 
 The modern town contains four or five thousand inhabitants. The site of the ancient city is 
 supposed to have been about two miles farther inland. Sidon is twice spoken of in Joshua 
 as the " great Sidon" (Josh. xi. 8, and xix. 28) ; and in the time of Homer there were " skillful 
 Sidonian artists" (Cowper's II. xxiii. 891). In the division of Palestine, Sidon fell to the lot of 
 Asher ; but we learn from Judges, (i. 31,) corroborated also by profane history, that it never 
 came into the actual possession of that tribe. In the time of Solomon there were none among 
 the Jews who had " skill to hew timber like unto the Sidonians." (1 Kings, v. 6.) The mod- 
 ern town of Said, the representative of the ancient city, is on the north side of a cape extending 
 into the Mediterranean. (Map No. VI.) 
 
 3. Jop' pa, 'now called Jaffa, a town of about four thousand inhabitants,') stands on a tongue 
 of land projecting into the Mediterranean, and rising from the shore in the form of an am- 
 phitheatre, thirty-two miles north-west from Jerusalem. The "border before Joppa" was in 
 eluded in the possessions of the tribe of Dan (Josh. xix. 46). In the time of Solomon it ap- 
 pears to have been a port of some consequence. Hiram, king of Tyre, writing to Solomon, 
 says, " We will cut wood out of Lebanon as much as thou shall need ; and we will bring it 
 thee in floats by sea to Jop' pa, and thou shall carry it up to Jerusalem." (.Vap No. VI.) 
 
 4. Jerusalem, first known as the city of the Jeb' usites, is in the southern part of Palestine, 
 nearly intermediate between tl e northern extremity of the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean, 
 vu\ thirty-two miles east from Jaf fa, (See farther description p. 164.)
 
 62 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART! 
 
 David, having resolved upon the conquest of this important city, 
 which its inhabitants deemed impregnable, sent Joab, his general, 
 against it, with a mighty army ; " and David took the stronghold of 
 Zion ;" and so pleased was he with its situation, that he made it the 
 capital of his dominions. 
 
 11. After the defeat of the Jeb' usites, David was involved in war 
 with many of the surrounding nations, whom he compelled to be- 
 come tributary to hin:, as far as the banks of the Euphrates. 
 Among these were most of the States of Syr' ia, 1 on the north-east, 
 with Damas' cus, a their capital, and also the E' domites, on the south- 
 eastern borders of Palestine. It was in the last of these wars, dur- 
 ing the siege of Rab' bah, 3 the Ammonite capital, that David pro- 
 voked the anger of the Lord by taking Bath' sheba, the wife of 
 Uriah, to himself, and exposing her husband to death. The re- 
 mainder of David's life was full of trouble from his children, three 
 of whom, Amnon, Absalom, and Adonijah, died violent deaths the 
 latter two after they had successively rebelled against their father 
 David died after a troubled but glorious reign of forty years, after 
 having given orders that his son Solomon should succeed him. 
 
 12. By the conquests of David the fame of the Israelites had 
 spread into distant lands, and Sobrnon obtained in marriage the 
 daughter of the king of Egypt. So celebrated was the wisdom of 
 Solomon, that the queen of Sheba a came to visit him from a dis 
 
 1. Ancient Syr' ia embraced the whole of Palestine, and Phoanicia, and was bounded on the 
 east by the Euphrates and the Arabian desert. Syr" ia is called in Scripture Aram, and the 
 inhabitants Aramaeans. The term Syr' ia is a corruption or abridgment of Assyria. (Map 
 No. V.) 
 
 2. Damas' cits, one of the most ancient cities of Syr' ia, existed in the time of Abraham, 
 two thousand years before the Christian era. (See Gen. xiv. 15.) It was conquered by David, 
 but freed itself from the Jewish yoke in the time of Solomon, when, becoming the seat of a 
 new principality, it often harassed the kingdoms both of Judah and Israel. At later periods 
 it fell successively under the power of the Persians, Greeks, and Romans. As a Roman city it 
 attained great eminence, and it appears conspicuously in the history of the Apostle Paul. (Acts, 
 ix.) It is now a large and important commercial Mohammedan city, containing a population 
 of more than a hundred thousand inhabitants. The city is situated in a pleasant plain, watered 
 by a river, the Syriac name of which was Pharphar, on the eastern side of the Anti-Lib' anus 
 mountains, a hundred and fifty miles north-east from Jerusalem. (Map No. VI.) 
 
 3. Rabbah, (afterwards called Philadelphia by the Greeks, when it was rebuilt by Ptolemy 
 Philadelphus,) was about thirty miles north-east from the northern extremity of the Dead Sea, 
 at the source of the brook Jabbok. Extensive ruins, at a place now called Ammon, consisting 
 of the remains of theatres, temples, and colonnades of Grecian construction, mark the site of 
 the Ammonite capital. The ancient city is now without an inhabitant, but the excellent water 
 found there renders the spot a desirable halting-place for caravans, the drivers of which use 
 the ancient temples and buildings as shelter for their beasts, literally fulfilling the denunciation 
 
 a. The queen of Sheba is supposed by some to have come from Southern Arabia, but is more 
 generally thought to have been the queen of A) yssinia, which is the firm belief of the Abyg- 
 sinians to this day. Jtitto's Palatine
 
 CHAP. III.] JEWISH HISTORY. 63 
 
 tant country, and the most powerful princes of the surrounding na- 
 tions courted his alliance. With Hiram, king of Tyre, the chief 
 city of the Phoanicians, and the emporium of the commerce of the 
 Eastern world, he was united by the strictest bonds of friendship. 
 Seven years and a half was he occupied in building, at Jerusalem, a 
 magnificent temple to the Lord. He also erected for himself a pal- 
 ace of unrivalled splendor. A great portion of his immense wealth 
 was derived from commerce, of which he was a distinguished patron. 
 From ports on the Red Sea, in his possession, his vessels sailed to 
 Ophir, some rich country on the shores of the Indian Ocean. By 
 the aid of Phoenician navigators he also opened a communication 
 with Tar' shish, in western Europe, while the commerce between 
 Central Asia and Palestine was carried on by caravans across the 
 desert. 
 
 13. But even Solomon, notwithstanding all his learning and wis- 
 dom, was corrupted by prosperity, and in his old age was seduced 
 by his numerous " strange wives" to forsake the God of his fathers. 
 He became an idolater : and then enemies began to arise up against 
 him on every side. A revolt was organized in E'dom: 1 an inde- 
 pendent adventurer seized Damascus, and formed a new Syrian king- 
 dom there ; and the prophet Ahijah foretold to Solomon that the 
 kingdom of Israel should be rent, and that the dominion of ten of 
 the twelve tribes should be given to Jeroboam, of the tribe of Eph- 
 raim, although not till after the death of Solomon. 
 
 14. Accordingly, on the death of Solomon, when Rehoboam his 
 son came to the throne, the ten northern tribes chose Jeroboam for 
 their king ; and Israel and Judah, with which latter was united the 
 tribe of Benjamin, became separate kingdoms. The separation thus 
 effected is called " The Revolt of the Ten Tribes." (990 B. C.) 
 The subsequent princes of the kingdom of Israel, as the Ten Tribes 
 were called, were all idolaters in the sight of the Lord, although 
 from time to time they were warned of the consequences of their 
 idolatry by the prophets Elijah, Elisha, Hosea, Amos, Jonah, and 
 others. The history of these ten tribes is but a repetition of 
 calamities and revolutions. Their seventeen kings, excluding two 
 
 of Ezekiel : " I will make Kabbah of the Ammonites a stable for camels, and a couching place 
 or flocks." (Ezekiel, xxv. 5.) (Map No. VI.) 
 
 1. The E' domites, inhabitants of Idumea, or E' dam, dwelt, at this time, in the country south 
 and south-east of the Dead Sea. During the Babylonian captivity the E' domites took posses- 
 won of the southern portion of Judea, and made Hebron their capital. They afterwards wn- 
 braced Judaism, and their territory became incorporated with Judea although in ibe time of 
 our Saviour it still retained the name of Idumea. (.Map No. VI.)
 
 64 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAET I 
 
 pretenders, belonged to seven different families, and were placed on 
 the throne by seven sanguinary conspiracies. At length Shalmanezer, 
 king of Assyria, invaded the country ; and Samaria, 1 its capital, after 
 a brave resistance of three years, was taken by storm. The ten 
 tribes were then driven out of Palestine, and carried away captive 
 into a distant region beyond the Euphrates, 719 years before the 
 Christian era. With their captivity the history of the ten tribes ends. 
 Their fate is still unknown to this day, and their history remains un- 
 written. 
 
 15. After the revolt of the ten tribes, Rehoboam reigned seven- 
 teen years at Jerusalem, over Judah and Benjamin, comprising what 
 was called the kingdom of Judah. During his reign he and his 
 subjects fell into idolatry, for which they were punished by an in- 
 vasion by Shishak, king of Egypt, who entered Jerusalem and car- 
 ried off the treasures of the temple and the palace. We find some 
 of the subsequent kings of Judah practising idolatry, and suffering 
 the severest punishments for their sins : others restored the worship 
 of the true God ; and of them it is^recorded that " God prospered 
 their undertakings." 
 
 16. At the time when Shalmanezer, the Assyrian, carried Israel 
 away captive, the wicked Ahaz was king over Judah. He brought 
 the country to the brink of ruin, but its fall was arrested by the 
 death of the impious monarch. The good Hezekiah succeeded him, 
 and, aided by the advice of the prophet Isaiah, commenced his reign 
 with a thorough reformation of abuses. He shook off the Assyrian 
 yoke, to which his father Ahaz had submitted by paying tribute. 
 Sennacherib, the son and successor of Shalmanezer, determining to 
 be revenged upon Judah, sent a large army against Jerusalem (711 
 B. C.) ; but " the angel of the Lord went forth, and smote, in the 
 camp of the Assyrians, a hundred and fourscore and five thousand 
 men." The instrument by which the Lord executed vengeance upon 
 the Assyrians, is supposed by some to have been the pestilential 
 simoom of the desert ; for Isaiah had prophesied of the king of As- 
 syria : " Thus saith the Lord ; behold, I will send a blast upon 
 him." a 
 
 17. It is interesting to find an account of the miraculous destruc- 
 tion of the Assyrian army in the pages of profane history. Senna- 
 
 1. Sam&rio^ (now called Sebustieh,) the capital of the kingdom of Israel, stood on Moiutt 
 Sameron, about forty miles north from Jerusalem. (Map No. VI.) 
 
 a. Isaiah, xxxvii. 6, 7
 
 CHAP. Ill] JEW/SH HISTORY. 65 
 
 cherib was at this time marching against Egypt, whose alliance had 
 been sought by Hezekiah, when, unwilling to leave the hostile power 
 of Judah in his rear, he turned against Jerusalem. It was natural, 
 therefore, that the discomfiture which removed the fears of the Egypt- 
 ians, should have a place in their annals. Accordingly, Herod' otus 
 gives an account of it, which he had learned from the Egyptians 
 themselves ; bjit in the place of the prophet Isaiah, it is an Egyptian 
 priest who invokes the aid of his god against the enemy, and pre- 
 dicts the destruction of the Assyrian host. 
 
 1 8. Herod' otus relates that the Egyptian king, directed by the 
 priest, marched against Sennacherib with a company composed only 
 of tradesmen and artizans, and that " so immense a number of mice 
 infested by night the enemy's camp, that their quivers and bows, 
 together with what secured their shields to their arms, were gnawed 
 in pieces;" and that, " in the morning the enemy, finding themselves 
 without arms, fled in confusion, and lost great numbers of their men." 
 Herod' otus also relates that, in his time, there was still standing in 
 the Egyptian temple of Vulcan a marble statue of this Egyptian 
 king, having a mouse in his hand, and with the inscription : " Learn 
 from my fortune to reverence the gods." a 
 
 19. Hezekiah was succeeded on the throne of Judah by his- son. 
 Manas' seh, who, in the early part of his reign, revelled in the gross- 
 est abominations of Eastern idolatry. Being carried away captive to 
 Babylon by Sardanapalus, the Assyrian king, he repented of his sins, 
 and was restored to his kingdom. The brief reign of his son A' mon 
 was corrupt and idolatrous. The good Josiah then succeeded to the 
 throne. His reign was an era in the religious government of the 
 nation ; but during an invasion of the country by Pharaoh Necho, 
 king of Egypt, he was mortally wounded in battle. Jerusalem was 
 soon after taken, and Jehoahaz, who had been elected to the throne 
 by the people, was deposed, and carried captive to Egypt, where he 
 died. 
 
 20. Not long after this, during the reign of Jehoiakim, the Egypt- 
 ian monarch, pursuing his conquests eastward against the Babylo- 
 nians, was utterly defeated by Nebuchadnez' zar near the Euphrates, 
 an event which prepared the way for the Babylonian dominion 
 over Judea and the west of Asia. Pursuing his success westward, 
 Nebuchadnez' zar came to Jerusalem, when the king, Jehoiakim, 
 submitted, and agreed to pay tribute for Judah ; but as he rebelled 
 
 a. Herod' otus, Book II. p. 141. 
 
 4
 
 66 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART! 
 
 after three years, Nebuchadnez' zar returned, pillaged Jerusalem 
 and carried away certain of the royal family and of the nobles as 
 hostages for the fidelity of the king and people. (B. C. 605.) 
 Among these were the prophet Daniel and his companions. Je- 
 choniah, the next king of Judah, was carried away to Babylon, with 
 a multitude of other captives, so that " none remained save the 
 poorest people of the land." . 
 
 21. The throne in Jerusalem was next filled by Zedekiah, who 
 joined some of the surrounding nations in a rebellion against Nebu- 
 chadnez' zar ; but Jerusalem, after an eighteen mouths' siege, whose 
 miseries were heightened by the horrors of famine, was taken by 
 storm at midnight. Dreadful was the carnage which ensued. Zede 
 kiah, attempting to escape, was made prisoner ; and the king of 
 Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and put out the 
 eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him with fetters of brass, and carried 
 him to Babylon. Nearly all the wretched inhabitants were made 
 companions of his exile. Jerusalem was burned, the temple levelled 
 with the ground, and the very walls destroyed. (586 B. C.) 
 
 22. Thus ended the kingdom of Judah, and the reign of the house 
 of David. Seventy years were the children of Israel detained in 
 captivity in Babylon, reckoning from the time of the first pillag- 
 ing of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnez' zar, a period that had been de- 
 clared in prophecy by Jeremiah, and which was distinguished by the 
 visions of Nebuchadnez' zar, the prophetic declarations of Daniel, 
 Belshazzar's feast, and the overthrow of the kingdom of Babylon by 
 the Modes and Persians. The termination of the Captivity, as had 
 been foretold by the prophets, was the act of Cyrus, the Persian, 
 immediately after the conquest of Babylon. (536 B. C.) 
 
 23. The edict of Cyrus permitted all Jews in his dominions to 
 return to Palestine, and to rebuild the city and temple of Jerusalem. 
 Only a zealous minority, however, returned, and but little progress 
 had been made in the rebuilding of the temple, when the work was 
 altogether stopped by an order of the next sovereign ; but during 
 the reign of Darius Hystas' pes, Zerub' babel, urged by the prophets 
 Hag' gai and Zechariah, obtained a new edict for the restoration of 
 the temple, and after four years the work was completed, 516 years 
 before the Christian era. The temple was now dedicated to 
 the worship of Jehovah, the ceremonies of the Jewish law were 
 restored, and never again did the Jews, as a people, relapse into 
 t Dlatry.
 
 CHAP. III.] PERSIAN HISTORY. 67 
 
 [III. ROM AX HISTORY.] 24. Having thus brought the events of 
 Jewish history down to the time of the commencement of the wars 
 between Greece and Persia, we again turn back to take a view of the 
 cotemporary history of such other nations as had begun to acquire 
 historical importance during the same period. Our attention is first 
 directed to Rome to the rise of that power which was destined event- 
 ually to overshadow the world, Rome is supposed to have been found- 
 ed 753 years before the Christian era, about the time of the abolition 
 of the hereditary archonship in Athens twenty years before the 
 commencement of the first war between Sparta and Messenia, and 
 about thirty years before the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah. 
 But the importance of Roman history demands a connected account, 
 which can better be given after Rome has broken in upon the line 
 of history we are pursuing, by the reduction of Greece to a Roman 
 province ; and as we have already arrived at a period of correspond- 
 ing importance in Persian affairs, we shall next briefly trace the 
 events of Persian history down to the time when they became min- 
 gled with the history of the Grecians. 
 
 [IY. PERSIAN HISTORY.] 25. In the course of the preceding 
 history of the Jews we have had occasion to mention the names of 
 Shahnenesar, Sennacherib, and Sardanapalus, who were the last 
 three kings of the united empire of Assyria, whose capital was Nine- 
 veh. Not long after Sardanapalus had attacked Judah, and carried 
 away its king Manas' seh into captivity, the governors of several of 
 the Assyrian provinces revolted against him, and besieged him in his 
 capital, when, finding himself deserted by his subjects, he destroyed 
 his own life. (671 B. C.) The empire, which, during the latter part 
 of the reign of Sardanapalus, had embraced Media, Persia, Babylo- 
 nia, and Assyria, was then divided among the conspirators. 
 
 26. Sixty-five years later, the Medes and Babylonians, with joint 
 forces, destroyed Nineveh (B. C. 606),* and Babylon became the capi 
 tal of the reunited empire. The year after the destruction of Nine^ 
 veh, Nebuchadnez' zar, a name common to the kings of Babylon, as 
 was Pharaoh to those of Egypt, made his first attack upon Jerusa- 
 lem (B. C. 605), rendering the Jews tributary to him, and carrying 
 away numbers of them into captivity, and among them the prophet 
 Daniel and his companions. Nineteen years later (B. C. 586), he 
 
 a. Clinton, i. 269. Grote, iii. 255, Note, says, " During the last ten years of the reign of Cyax- 
 ares" : and Cj-axares, the Mede, reigned from 036 to 595.
 
 68 ANCIENT HISTORY [PAET I. 
 
 destroyed the very walls of Jerusalem and the temple itself, and 
 carried away the remnant of the Jews captive to Babylon. 
 
 27. Soon after the conquest of Judea, Nebuchadnez' zar resolved 
 to take vengeance on the surrounding nations, some of whom had 
 solicited the Jews to unite in a confederacy against him, but had af- 
 terwards rejoiced at their destruction. These were the Am' monites, 
 Moabites, E'domites, Arabians, Sidonians, Tyr' ians, Philistines, 
 Egyptians, and Abyssin'ians. The subjugation of each was par- 
 ticularly foretold by the prophets, and has been related both by 
 sacred and profane writers. In the war against the Phoenicians, 
 after a long siege of thirteen years he made himself master of insular 
 Tyre, the Phoenician capital (B. C. 571), and the Tyr' ians became 
 subject to him and his successors until the destruction of the Chal- 
 dean monarchy by Cyrus. a 
 
 28. In the war against Egypt (B. C. 570), Nebuchadnez' zar laid 
 the whole country waste, in accordance with previous predictions of 
 the prophets Ezeldel and Jeremiah. The prophecy of Ezekiel, that, 
 after the desolations foretold, " there shall no more be a prince of 
 the land of Egypt," has been verified in a remarkable manner ; for 
 the kings of Egypt were made tributary, and grievously oppressed, 
 first by the Babylonians, and next by the Persians ; and since the 
 rule of the latter, Egypt has successively been governed by foreigners 
 by the Macedonians, the Romans, the Mamelukes, and lastly, by 
 the Turks, who possess the land of the Pharaohs to this day. 
 
 29. It was immediately after his return from Egypt that Nebu- 
 chadnez' zar, flushed with the brilliancy of his conquests, set up a 
 golden image, and commanded all the people to fall down and wor- 
 ship it. (B. C. 569.) Notwithstanding the rebuke which his impiety 
 received on this occasion, after he had adorned Babylon with mag- 
 nificent works, again the pride of his heart was exhibited, for as he 
 walked in his palace he said, in exultation, " Is not this great Baby- 
 lon that I have built for the head of the kingdom, by the might of 
 .my power, and for the honor of my majesty ?" But in the same 
 
 hour that he had spoken he was struck with lunacy, and all his glory 
 departed from him. Of his dreams, and their prophetic interpreta- 
 tion by Daniel, we shall have occasion to speak, as the predictions are 
 successively verified in the progress of history. 
 
 n. The common sta'.emcnt that it was the inland town that was reduced by Nebuchadnez'- 
 zar, and that most of ihe inhabitants had previously withdrawn to an island, where they built 
 "New Tyre," seems to be erroneous. See Grote's Greece, iii. 266-7.
 
 CHAP III.] PERSIAN HISTORY. 69 
 
 30. Not long after the reign of Nebuchadnez' zar, we find Bel- 
 snaz' zar, probably a grandson of the former, on the throne of Baby- 
 lon. Nothing is recorded of him but the circumstances of his 
 death, which are related in the fifth chapter of Daniel. He was 
 probably slain in a conspiracy of his nobles. (B. C. 553.) In the 
 meantime, the kingdom of Media 1 had risen to eminence under the 
 successive reigns of Phraor' tes, Cyax' ares, and Asty' ages, 2 the for- 
 mer of whom is supposed to be the Ahasuerus mentioned in the book 
 of Daniel. a While some writers mention a successor of Asty' ages, 
 Cyax' ares II., who has been thought to be the same as the Darius 
 of Scripture, others assert that Asty' ages was the last of the Me- 
 dian kings. In accordance with the latter and now generally-received 
 account, Cyrus, a grandson of Asty' ages, but whose father was a 
 Persian, roused the Persian tribes against the ruling Medes, defeated 
 Asty' ages, and transferred the supreme power to the Persians. 
 (558 B. C.)b 
 
 31. Cyrus the Great, as he is often called, is generally considered 
 the founder of the Persian empire. Soon after his accession to 
 the throne his dominions were invaded by Croe' sus, king of Lydia 
 but Cyrus defeated him in the great battle of Thymbria, and after 
 wards, besieging him in his own capital of Sardis, took him prisoner, 
 and obtained possession of all his treasures. (B. C. 546.) The sub- 
 jugation of the Grecian cities of Asia Minor by the Persians soon 
 followed. Cyrus next laid siege to Babylon, which still remained an 
 independent city in the heart of his empire. Babylon soon fell be- 
 neath his power, and it has been generally asserted that he effected 
 the conquest by turning the waters of the Euphrates from their chan- 
 nel, and marching his troops into the city through the dry bed of the 
 stream; but this account has been doubted, while it has been thought 
 quite as probable that he owed his success to some internal revolu- 
 tion, which put an end to the dynasty of the Babylonian kings. 
 (B. C. 536.) The prophetic declarations of the final and utter de- 
 
 1. Media^ the boundaries of which varied greatly at different times, embraced the country 
 immediately south and south-west of the Caspian Sea, and north of the early Persia. (Map 
 No. V.) 
 
 2. These kings were probably in a measure subordinate to the ruling king at Babylon. 
 
 a. Daniel, ix. 1. Kale's Analysis, iv. 81. 
 
 b. Niebuhr's Lect. on Ancient Hist. i. 135. Grote's Greece, iv. 183. 
 
 c. The accounts of the early history of Cyrus, as derived from Xen' ophon, H erod' otus, Ctesias, 
 &c., are very contradictory. The account of Herod' otus is now generally preferred, as con- 
 taining a greater proportion of historical truth than the others. Grote calls |he Cyropo?' dia of 
 Xen' ophon a " philosophical novel." Niebuhr says, " No rational man, in ur days, can loot 
 upon Xen' option's history of Cyrus in any >ther light than that of a romance."
 
 70 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART I 
 
 structiou of Babylon, which was eventually to be made a desolate 
 waste a possession for the bittern a retreat for the wild beasts of 
 the desert and of the islands to be filled with pools of water and 
 to be inhabited no more from generation to generation, have been fully 
 verified. 
 
 32. In the year that Babylon was taken, Cyrus issued the famous 
 decree which permitted the Jews to return to their own land, and 
 to rebuild the city and temple of Jerusalem events which had been 
 foretold by the prophet Isaiah more than a century before Cyrus 
 was born. Cyrus is supposed to have lived about seven years after 
 the taking of Babylon directing his chief attention to the means 
 of increasing the prosperity of his kingdom. The manner of his 
 death is a disputed point in history, but in the age of Strabo his 
 tomb bore the inscription : " man, I am Cyrus, who founded the 
 Persian empire : envy me not then the little earth which covers my 
 remains." 
 
 33. Camby' ses succeeded his father pri the throne of Persia. 
 (530 B. C.) Intent on carrying out the ambitious designs of Cyrus, 
 he invaded and conquered Egypt, although the Egyptian king was 
 aided by a force of Grecian auxiliaries. The power of the Persians 
 was also extended over several African tribes : even the Greek col 
 ony of Cyrenaica 1 was forced to pay tribute to Camby' ses, and the 
 Greek cities of Asiu Minor remained quiet under Persian governors ; 
 but an army which Camby' ses sent over the Libyan desert to sub- 
 due the little oasis where the temple of Jripiter Am' mon a was the 
 centre of an independent community, was buried in the sands ; 
 and another army which the king himself led up the Nile against 
 Ethiopia, came near perishing from hunger. The Persian king 
 would have attempted the conquest of the rising kingdom of Car- 
 thage, but his Phoenician allies or subjects, who constituted his naval 
 power, were unwilling to lend their aid in destroying the indepen- 
 dence of their own colony, and Camby' ses was forced to abandon the 
 project. 
 
 34. On the death of Camly'ses (B. C. 521), one Smer' dis, an 
 
 1. Cyrenaica, a country on the African roast of the Mediterranean, corresponded with th 
 western portion of the modern Barca. It vas sometimes called Pentap' nlis, from its hn'ng 
 five Grecian cities of note in it, of which Cyrene was the capital. (See p. 95, also Map No. V.) 
 
 2. The Temple of Jupiter Jim.' man was situated in what is now called the Oasis of Siwab, a 
 fertile spot in the desert, three hundred miles south-west from Cairo. The time and (he cir- 
 cumstances of the existence of this temple are unknown, but, like that of Delphi, it was famed 
 for its treasures. A well sixty feet deep, which has been discovered in the oasis, is supposed 
 to mark the site of the temple.
 
 CHAP. III.] PERSIAN HISTORY. 71 
 
 impostor, a pretended son of Cyrus, seized the throne ; but the Per- 
 sian nobles soon formed a conspiracy against him, killed him in hia 
 palace, and chose one of their own number to reign in his stead. 
 The new monarch assumed the old Median title of royalty, and is 
 known in history as Darius, or Darius Hystas' pes. Babylon having 
 revolted, he was engaged twenty months in the siege of the city 
 which was finally taken by the artifice of a Persian nobleman, who 
 pretending to desert to the enemy, gained their confidence, and 
 having obtained the command of an important post in the city, 
 opened the gates to the Persians : Darius put to death three thou- 
 sand of the citizens, and ordered the one hundred gates to be pulled 
 down, and the walls of the proud city to be demolished, that it might 
 never after be in a condition to rebel against him. The favor which 
 this monarch showed the Jews, in permitting them to rebuild the 
 walls of Jerusalem, has already been mentioned. 
 
 35. The attention of Darius was next turned towards the Scyth- 
 ians, 1 then a European nation, who inhabited the country along the 
 western borders of the Euxine, from the Tan' ais or Don 2 to the north- 
 ern boundaries of Thrace. 3 Darius indeed overran their country, 
 but without finding an enemy who would meet him in battle ; for the 
 Scythians were wise enough to retreat before the invader, and deso- 
 late the country through which he directed his course. When the 
 supplies of the Persians had been cut off on every side, and their 
 strength wasted in useless pursuit, they were glad to seek safety by 
 a hasty retreat. 
 
 36. The next important events in the history of Darius we find 
 connected with the revolt, and final subjugation, of the Greek colonies 
 of Asia Minor, an account of which has already been given. Still 
 Darius was not a conqueror like Cyrus or Camby'ses, but seems 
 to have aimed rather at consolidating and securing his empire, than 
 
 1. ScytMa is a name given by the early Greeks-to the country on the northern and western 
 borders of the Euxine. In the time of the first Ptolemy, however, the early Scythia, together 
 with the whole region from the Baltic Sea to the Caspian, had changed its name to Sarmatia, 
 while the entire north of Asia beyond the Himalaya mountains was denominated Scythia 
 (Map Nos. V. and IX.) 
 
 2. The Don (anciently Tan' ais), rising in Central Russia, flows south-east until it approaches 
 within about thirty-six miles of the Volga, when it turns to the south-west, and enters the 
 north-eastern extremity of the Sea of Azof (anciently Palus Moeotis). (Map No. IX.) 
 
 3. Thrace^ embracing nearly the same as the modern Turkish province of Rumilia, was 
 bounded on the north by the Haemus mountains, on the east by the Euxine, on the south by 
 the Propon' tis and the JK gean Sea, and on the west by Macedonia. Its principal river wa* 
 the Hebrus (now Maritza), and its largest towns, excepting those in the Thracian Cher3<W..us 
 (see p. 96.) were lladrianopolis anc 1 Byzantium. (Map No. III. and IX.)
 
 72 ANCIENT HISTORY. [?ABT L 
 
 at enlarging it. The dominions bequeathed him by his predecessors 
 comprised many countries, united under one government only by 
 their subjection to the will and the arbitrary exactions of a common 
 ruler ; but Darius first organized them into one empire, by dividing 
 the whole into twenty satrapies or provinces, and assigning to each 
 its proper share in the burdens of government. 
 
 37. Under Darius the Persian empire had now attained its great- 
 est extent, embracing, in Asia, all that, at a later period, was con- 
 tained in Persia proper and Turkey ; in Africa, taking in, Egypt as 
 far as Nubia, and the coast of the Mediterranean as far as Barca ; 
 and in Europe, part of Thrace and Macedonia thus stretching from 
 the JE' gean Sea to the Indus, and from the plains of Tartary 1 to 
 the cataracts of the Nile. Such was the empire against whose united 
 power a few Grecian communities were to contend for the preserva- 
 tion of their very name and existence. The results of the contest 
 may be learned from the following chapter. (See Map No. VII.) 
 
 1. Tartary ia a name of modern origin, applied to that extensive portion of Central Ana 
 which extends eastward from the Caspian Sea to the Pacific Ocean.
 
 CHAP. IV.] GRECIAN HISTORY. 73 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE AUTHENTIC 'PERIOD OF GRECIAN HISTORY. 
 SECTION I. 
 
 GRJ*<*>> HISTORY FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE FIRST WAR WITH PERSIA TO THE E3 
 TABLISHMENT OF PHILIP ON THE THRONE OF MACEDON I 
 
 490 TO 360 B. c. 130 YEARS. 
 
 ANALYSIS. FIRST PERSIAN WAR. 1. Preparations of Darius for the conquest of Greece, 
 Mardonius. Destruction of the Persian fleet. [Mount A' thos.] Return of Mardonius. 2. Re- 
 newed pti>kiaiions of Darius. Heralds sent to Greece. Their treatment by the Athenians and 
 Spartans. Ths .Eginetans. [Algina.] 3. Persian fleet sails for Greece. Islands submit, 
 Eubee'a. Fenians at Mar'athon. The Platae'ans aid the Athenians. Spartans absent. 
 [Mar'athon. Platae'a.] 4. The Athenian army. How commanded. 5. Battle of Mar' athon. 
 6. Remarks on the battle. Legends of the battle. 7. The war terminated. Subsequun 
 history of Miltiades. [Paros.] Themis' tocles and Arisfrides. Their characters. Banish- 
 ment of the latter. [Ostracism.] 9. Death of Darius. SECOND PERSIAN WAR. Xerxes in- 
 vades Greece- Opposed by Leon' idas. [Thermop' ylae.] Anecdote of Dien' eces. 10. Treachery. 
 Leon' idas dismisses his allies. Self-devotion of the Greeks. 11. Eiirytus and Aristodemus. 
 12. The Athenians desert Athens, which is burned by the enemy. [Trezene.] The Greeks 
 fortify the Corinthian Isthmus. 13. The Persian fleet at Sal' amis. Eurybiades, Themis' tocles, 
 and Aristides. 14. Battle of Sal' amis. Flight of Xerxes. [HeV lespont.] Battle of Platae'a 
 of Myc' ale. [Myc r ale.] Death of Xerxes. 15. Athens rebuilt. Banishment of Themis'- 
 tocles. Cimon and Pausanias. The Persian dependencies. Ionian revolt. [Cy'prus. By- 
 zan' tium.] 1C. Final peace with Persia. 17. Dissensions among the Grecian States. Per' 
 icles. Jealousy of Sparta, and growing power of Athens. 18. Power and character of Sparta. 
 Earthquake at Sparta. Revolt of the Helots. THIRD MESSE'KIAN WAR. Migration of the 
 Messenians. 19. Athenians defeated at Tan' agra. [Tan'agra.] Subsequent victory gained by 
 Ihe Athenians. 
 
 20. Causes which opened the FIRST PELOPONNE' SIAN WAR. [Corey' ra. Potidae'a.] 21. 
 The Spartan army ravages At' tica. The Athenian navy desolates the coast of the Peloponne- 
 sus. [Meg' ara.] 22. Second invasion of At' tica. The plague at Athens, and death of Per'- 
 icles. Potidae'a surrenders to Athens, and Platae'a to Sparta. 23. The peace of Nicias. Pre- 
 texts for renewing the struggle. 24. Character of Alcibiades. His artifices. Reduction of 
 Melos. [Melps.] 25. THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION. Its object. [Sicily. Syracuse.] Revolt 
 and flight of Alcibiades. 26. Operations of Nicias, and disastrous result of the expedition. 
 
 27. SECOND PELOPONNE' SIAN WAR. Revolt of the Athenian allies. Intrigues of Alcibiades. 
 Revolution at Athens. [Eretria Cys' icus.] Return of Alcibiades. 28. He is again banished. 
 The affairs of Sparta are retrieved by Lysan' der. Cyrus the Persian. 29. The Athenians are 
 defeated at JK gos-Pot' amos. Treatment of the prisoners. 30. Disastrous state of Athenian 
 affairs. Submission of Athens, and close of the war. 31. Change of government at Athens. 
 The Thirty Tyrants overthrown. The rule of the democracy restored. 32. Character, accusa- 
 tion, and death of Soc' rates. 33. The designs of Cyrus the Persian. He is aided by the Greeks 
 34. Result of his expedition. 35. Famous retreat of the Ten Thousand. 36. The Creek cities 
 of Asia are involved in a war with Persia. The THIRD PELOPONNE' SIAN WAR. [Coronea.j 
 The peace of Antal' cidas. [Im' brus, Lem' nos, and Scy' rus.] 37. The designs of the Persian 
 king promoted by the jealousy of the Greeks. Athens and Sparta how affected by the peace 
 38. Sparta is involved in new wars. War with Mantinca. Wilh Olyn'thus. [Mantlnem 
 
 D
 
 74 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PABT L 
 
 Glyn'thus.] Seizure of the Theban citadel. 39. The political morality of tlu Spartans. 40. 
 The Theban citadel recovered. Pelop' Idas and Epaminon' das. Events of thf Theban war. 
 [Teg'yra. Leuc' tra.] 41. The SKCOND SACRED WAR. [First Sacred War.] Causes of the 
 Second Sacred War. [Phocis.] 42. The parties to the war. [Locrians.] Cruelties practised. 
 Philip of Macedon. 
 
 1. After the subjugation of the Ionian cities of Asia Minor, Darius 
 made active preparations for the conquest, of all Greece. A mighty 
 
 i. FIRST PEE- armament was fitted out and intrusted to the command 
 SIAN WAR. of his son-in-law Mardonius, who, leading the land force in 
 person through Thrace and Macedonia, succeeded, after being once routed 
 by a night attack, a in subduing those countries ; but the Persian fleet, 
 which was designed to sweep the islands of the JEt' gean, was checked 
 in its progress by a violent storm which it encountered off Mount 
 A' thos 1 , and which was thought to have destroyed three hundred ves- 
 sels and twenty thousand lives. Weakened by these disasters, Mar- 
 donius abruptly terminated the campaign and returned to Asia. 
 
 2. Darius soon renewed his preparations for the invasion of Greece, 
 and, while his forces were assembling, sent heralds through the 
 Grecian cities, demanding earth and water, as tokens of submission. 
 The smaller States, intimidated by his power, submitted ; b but Athens 
 and Sparta haughtily rejected the demands of the eastern monarch, 
 and put his heralds to death with cruel mockery, throwing one into a 
 pit and another into a well, and bidding them take thence their earth 
 and water. The Spartans threatened to make war upon the JEgine- 
 tans a for having basely submitted to the power of Persia, and com- 
 pelled them to send hostages to Athens. 
 
 1. Mount Jt thos is a lofty summit, more than six thousand feet high, on the most eastern of 
 three narrow peninsulas which extend from Macedonia into the JE' gean sea. The peninsula 
 which is about twenty-five miles in length by about four in breadth, has long been occupied 
 in modern times by a number of monks of the Greek Church, who live in a kind of fortified 
 monasteries, about twenty in number. No females are admitted within this peninsula, whose 
 modern name, derived from its supposed sanctity, is Monte Santo, "sacred mountain." 
 (Map No. I.) 
 
 2 ^g-tna, (now Egina or EngiaJ) was an island containing about fifty square miles, in the 
 centre of the Saron' ic Gulf, (now Gulf of Athens,) between Attica and Ar' golis, and sixteen 
 miles south-west from Athens. The remains of a temple of Jupiter in the northern part of 
 the island are among the most interesting of the Grecian ruins. Of its thirty-six columns, 
 twenty-five were recently standing. (Map No. I.) 
 
 a. By the Brygi, a Thracian tribe. Mardonius wounded 
 
 b. Among them, probably, the Thebans and Thessalians ; also most of the islands, but ntt 
 Euboe' a and Nax' os. The Persians desolated Nax' os on then- way across the JE' gean. 
 
 c. At this time Thebes and ^Egina had been at war with Athens fourteen years. Ar' gos, 
 which had contested with Sparta the supremacy of Greece, had recently been subdued ; and 
 Sparta was acknowledged to be the he ad of the political union of Greece against the Per- 
 sians. Crete's Greece, iv. 311-328.
 
 CHAP IV.] GRECIAX HISTORY. 75 
 
 3. In the third year after the first disastrous campaign, a Persian 
 fleet of six hundred ships, conveying an arniy of a hundred and twenty 
 thousand men, commanded by the generals Datis and Artapher' nes, 
 and guided by the exiled tyrant and traitor Hip' pias, directed it& 
 course towards the Grecian shores. (B. C. 490.) Several islands of 
 the M' gean submitted without a struggle ; Euboe' a was punished for 
 the aid it had given the lonians in their rebellion ; and without farther 
 opposition the Persian host advanced to the plains of Mar' athon, 
 within twenty miles of Athens. The Athenians probably called on 
 the Plate' ans 2 as well as the Spartans for aid : a the former sent 
 their entire force of a thousand men ; but the latter, influenced by 
 jealousy or superstition, refused to send their proffered aid before the 
 full of the moon. 
 
 4. In this extremity the Athenian army, numbering only ten thou- 
 sand men, and commanded by ten generals, marched against the enemy. 
 Five of the ten generals had been afraid to hazard a battle, but the 
 arguments 1 * of Miltiades, one of their number, finally prevailed upon 
 the polemarch Callim' achus to give his casting vote in favor of fight- 
 ing. The ten generals were to command the whole army successively, 
 each for a day. Those who had seconded the advice of Miltiades 
 were willing to resign their turns to him, but he waited till his own 
 day arrived, when he drew up the little army in order of battle. 
 
 1. Mar' athon, which still retains its ancient name, is a small town of Attica, twenty miles 
 northeast from Athens, and about three miles from the sea-coast, or Bay of Mar' athon. The 
 plain in which the battle was fought is about five miles in length and two ifi breadth, inclosed 
 on the land side by steep slopes descending from the higher ridges of Pentel' icus and Paros, 
 and divided into two unequal parts by a small stream which falls into the Bay. Towards the 
 middle of the plain may still be seen a mound of earth, twenty-five feet in height, which was 
 raised over the bodies of the Athenians who fell in the battle. In the marsh near the sea. 
 coast, also, the remains of trophies arid marble monuments are still visible. The names of 
 the one hundred and ninety-two Athenians who were slain were inscribed on ten pillars 
 erected on the battle-field. (Map No. I.) 
 
 2. Plata' a, a city of Boeotia, now wholly in ruins, was situated on the northern side of ths 
 Cithae' ron mountains, seven miles south from Thebes. This city has acquired an immortality 
 of renown from its having given its name to the great battle fought in its vicinity in the year 
 479 B. C. between the Persians under Mardonius, and the Greeks under Pausanias the Spar- 
 tan. (See p. 80.) From the tenth of the spoils taken from the Persians on that occasion, and 
 presented to the shrine of Delphi, a golden tripod was made, supported by a brazen pillar 
 resembling three serpents twined together. This identical brazen pillar may still be seen in 
 the Hippodrome of Constantinople. (Map No. I.) 
 
 a. Thirwall says: " It is probable that they summoned the Platae' ans." Grote says : " We 
 are not told that they had been invited." 
 
 b. Herod' otus describes this debate as having occurred at Mar' athon, after the Greeks had 
 taken post in sight of the Persians; while Cornelius Nepos says it occurred before the army 
 left Athens. Thirwall appears to follow the former: Grote declares his preference for the 
 a^er, as the most reasonable.
 
 76 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART I 
 
 5. The Persians we're extended in a line across the middle of the 
 plain, having their best troops in the centre. The Athenians were 
 drawn up in a line opposite, but having their main strength in the 
 extreme wings of their army. The Greeks made the attack, and, as 
 had been foreseen by Miltiades, their centre was soon broken, while 
 the extremities of the enemy's line, made up of motley and undisci- 
 plined bands of all nations, were routed, and driven towards the shore, 
 and into the adjoining morasses. Hastily concentrating his two 
 wings, Miltiades next directed their united force against the flanks of 
 the Persian centre, which, deeming itself victorious, was taken com- 
 pletely by surprise. In a few minutes victory decided in favor of the 
 Greeks. The Persians fled in disorder to their ships; but many 
 perished in the marshes ; the sfbre was strewn with their dead, and 
 seven of their ships were destroyed. The loss of the Persians was 
 6,400 : that of the Athenians, not including the Platse' ans, only 192. 
 
 6. Such was the famous battle of Mar' athon ; but the glory of 
 the victory is not to be measured wholly by the disparity of the 
 numbers engaged, when compared with the result. The Persians 
 were strong in the terror of their name, and in the renown of their 
 conquests ; and it required a most heroic resolution in the Athenians 
 to face a danger which they had not yet learned to despise. The 
 victory was viewed by the people as a deliverance vouchsafed to the 
 Grecians by the gods themselves : the marvellous legends of the battle 
 attributed to the heroes prodigies of valor ; and represented Theseus 
 and Her' cules as sharing in the fight, and dealing death to the flying 
 barbarians ; while to this day the peasant believes the field of Mar' a- 
 thon to be haunted with spectral warriors, whose shouts are heard at 
 midnight, borne on the wind, and rising above the din of battle. 
 
 7. The victory obtained by the Greeks at Mar' athon terminated 
 the first war with Persia. Soon after the Persian defeat, Miltiades, 
 who at first received all the honors which a grateful people could be- 
 stow, experienced a fate which casts a melancholy gloom over his 
 history. Being unfortunate in an expedition which he led against Pa- 
 ros, 1 and which he induced the Athenians to intrust to him, without 
 informing them of its destination, he was accused of having deceived 
 
 1. P&ros is an island of the ^E'gean sea, of the group of the Cyc' lades, about seventy-five 
 miles south east from Attica. It is about twelve miles in length by eight in breadth, rugged 
 and uneven but generally very fertile. Pares was famous in antiquity for its marble, although 
 that obtained from Mount Pentel' icus in Attica was of the purest white. In modern times 
 Paros has become distinguished for the discovery there of the celebrated " Parian or Arunde- 
 lian Chronicle," cut in a marble slab, and purporting to be a chronological account of Grecian
 
 CHAP. IV.] GRECIAN HISTORY. 77 
 
 the peop-e, or, as some say, of having received a bribe. Unable to 
 defend his cause before the people on account of an injury which he 
 had received at Pares, he was impeached before the popular judica- 
 ture as worthy of death ; and although the proposition of his accusers 
 was rejected, he was condemned to pay a fine of fifty talents. A few 
 days later Miltiadcs died of his wound, and the fine was paid by his 
 son Cimon. 
 
 8. After the death of Miltlades, Themis' tocles and Aristides be- 
 come, for a time, the most prominent men among the Athenians. The 
 former, a most able statesman, being influenced by ambitious motives, 
 aimed to make Athens great and powerful, that he himself might rise 
 to greater eminence with the growing fortunes of the state ; the latter, 
 a pure patriot, had, like Themis' tocles, the good of Athens at heart, 
 but, unlike his rival, he was wholly destitute of selfish ambition, and 
 knew no cause but that of justice and the public welfare. His known 
 probity acquired for him the appellation of The Just ; but his very 
 integrity made for him secret enemies, who, although they charged him 
 with no crimes, were yet able to procure from the people the penalty of 
 banishment against him by ostracism. 1 His removal left Themis' tocles 
 in possession of almost undivided power at Athens, and threw upon 
 him chiefly the responsibility of the measure for resisting another 
 Persian invasion, with which the Greeks were now threatened. 
 
 9. Darius made great preparations for invading Greece in person, 
 when death put an end to his ambitious projects. Ten years after 
 the battle of Mar'athon, Xerxes, the son and successor n SECO x D 
 of Darius, being determined to execute the plans of his PERSIAN WAR. 
 father, entered Greece at the head of an army the greatest the world 
 has ever seen, and whose numbers have been estimated at more than 
 two millions of fighting men. This immense force, passing through 
 Thes' saly, had arrived, without opposition, at the strait of Thermop'- 
 ylae, 2 where Xerxes found a body of eight thousand men, command- 
 
 tiistory from the time of Cecrops to the year 26 1 B. C. The pretence of Miltiacles in attacking 
 Paros was that the inhabitants had aided the Persians; but Herod' otus assures us that his 
 real motive was a private grudge against a Parian citizen. The injury of which he died was 
 caused by a fall that he received while attempting to visit by night, a Parian priestess of Ceres, 
 who had proirised to reveal to him a secret that would place Paros in his power. (Map No. III.) 
 
 1. The mode of Ostracism was as follows: The people having assembled, each man took a 
 shell (ostrakori) and wrote on it the name of the person whom he wished to have banished. 
 If the number of votes thus given was less than six thousand, the ostracism was void ; but if 
 more, then the person whose name was on the greatest number of shells was sent into banish 
 ment for ten years. 
 
 2. Thermop' ylte is a narrow defile on the western shore of the Gulf which lies between 
 Eubos'a and Thessaly, and is almost the only road by which Greece can be entered on the
 
 78 ANCIENT HISTORY. 
 
 ed by the Spartan king Leon' Idas, prepared to dispute the passage 
 Xerxes sent a herald to the Greeks, commanding them to lay down 
 their arms; but Leon'idas replied with true Spartan brevity, "come 
 and take them." When one said that the Persians were so numerous 
 that their very darts would darken the sun, " Then," replied Dieneces, 
 a Spartan, " we shall fight in the shade." 
 
 1 0. After repeated and unavailing efforts, during two days, to break 
 the Grecian lines, the confidence of Xerxes had changed into de- 
 spondence and perplexity, when a deserter revealed to him, for a large 
 reward, a secret path over the mountains, by which he was enabled 
 to throw a force of twenty thousand men into the rear of the Gre- 
 cians. Leon'idas, seeing that his post was no longer tenable, dis- 
 missed all his allies who were willing to retire, retaining with him 
 only three hundred fclhow Spartans, with some Thes' plans and The- 
 bans, in all about a thousand men. The Spartans were forbidden by 
 their laws ever to flee from an enemy ; and Leon' idas and his coun- 
 trymen, and their Thes' pian allies, a prepared to sell their lives as 
 dearly as possible. Falling suddenly upon the enemy, they pene- 
 trated to the very centre of the Persian host, slaying two brothers of 
 Xerxes, and fighting with the valor of desperation, until every 
 one of their number had fallen. A monument was afterwards 
 erected on the spot, bearing the following inscription : " Go stranger, 
 and tell at Laced^emon that we died here in obedience to her 
 laws." 
 
 1 1. Previous to the last attack of the Spartans, two of their num- 
 ber, Eurytus and Aristodemus, were absent on leave, suffering from 
 a severe complaint of the eyes. Eurytus, being informed that the 
 hour for the detachment was come, called for his armor, and direct- 
 ing his servant to lead him to his place in the ranks, fell foremost in 
 the fight. Aristodemus, overpowered with physical suffering, was 
 carried to Sparta ; but he was denounced as a coward for not imi- 
 
 north-east, by way of Thessaly. This famous pass, which is shut in between steep preci- 
 pices and the sea, at the eastern extremity of Mount CE'ta, is about five miles in length, and, 
 where narrowest, was not anciently, according to Herod' otus, more than half a plethron, or 
 fifty feet across, although Livy says sixty paces. The pass has long been gradually widening, 
 however, by the deposits of soil brought down by the mountain streams. In the narrowest 
 part of the pass were hot springs, from which the defile derives its name. (Thermos, "hot," 
 and pule, a " gate" or " pass.") (Map No. I.) 
 
 a. The Fhebans took part in the beginning of the fight, to save appearances, but finally sur- 
 rendered to the Persians, loudly proclaiming that they had come to Thermop'ylae against their 
 consent. The story that Leon' idas made a night attack, <uid penetrated nearly to the royal 
 tent, Is a mere fiction. (See Grote, v 92. Note.)
 
 CHAP. IV.] GRECIAN HISTORY. 79 
 
 tating his comrade no one would speak or communicate with hinr 
 or even grant him a light for his fire. After a year of bitter dis- 
 grace, he was at length enabled to retrieve his honor at the battle 
 ofPlatae'a, where he was slain, after surpassing all his comrades in 
 heroic and even reckless valor. a 
 
 12. After the fall of Leon' idas, the Persians ravaged At' tica, and 
 soon appeared before Athens, which they burned to the ground, but 
 which had previously been deserted of its inhabitants, those able to 
 bear arms having retired to the island of Sal' amis, while the old and 
 infirm, the women and children, had found shelter in Trezene, 1 a 
 city of Ar' golis. The allied Grecians took possession of the Corin- 
 thian Isthmus, which they fortified by a wall, and committed to the 
 defence of Cleom' brotus, a brother of Leon' idas. 
 
 13. Xerxes next made preparations to annihilate the power of the 
 Grecians in a naval engagement, and sent his whole fleet to block up 
 that of the Greeks in the narrow strait of Sal' amis. Eurybiades, 
 the Spartan, who commanded the Grecian fleet, was in favor of sail- 
 ing to the isthmus, that the naval and land forces might act in con- 
 junction, but Themis' tocles finally prevailed upon him to hazard an 
 engagement, and his counsels were enforced by Aristides, now in the 
 third year of his exile, who crossed over in a small boat from .^Egina 
 with intelligence of the exact position of the Persian fleet ; a cir- 
 cumstance that at once put an end to the rivalry between the two 
 Athenians, and led to the restoration of Aristides. 
 
 14. Xerxes had caused a royal throne to be erected on one of the 
 neighboring heights, where, surrounded by his army, he might wit- 
 ness the battle of Sal' amis, in which he was confident of victory ; but 
 he had the misfortune to see his magnificent navy almost utterly an- 
 nihilated. Terrified at the result, he hastily fled across the Hel' les- 
 pont," and retired into his own dominions, leaving Mardonius, at the 
 head of three hundred thousand men, to complete, if possible, the 
 conquest of Greece. Mardonius passed the winter in Thes'saly, 
 but in the following summer his army was totally defeated and him- 
 
 1. Trezene was near the south-eastern extremity of Ar' golis. Its ruins may be seen near th. 
 amall modern village of Da.ma.la. 
 
 2. The Hei lespont (now called Dardanelles), is the narrow strait which connects the sea of 
 Marmora with the JE' gean. It is about forty miles in length, and varies in breadth from three 
 quarters of a mile to ten miies. The Dardanelles, from which the modern name of the strait 
 is derived, are castles, or forts, built on its banks. The strt.it, being the key to Constantinople 
 and the Black Sea, has been very strongly fortified on both sides by the T irks. (Mar V IV.) 
 
 a. Grote, v. 95.
 
 80 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAKI I 
 
 self slain in the battle of Plate' a. (B. C. 479.) Two hundred thou- 
 sand Persians fell in battle, and only a small remnant escaped across 
 the Hel' lespont the last Persian army that gained a footing on the 
 Grecian territory. On the very day of the battle of Platse' a, the re- 
 mains of the Persian fleet which had escaped at Sal' amis, and which 
 had been drawn up on shore at Myc' ale, 1 on the coast of Icnia, were 
 burned by the Grecians, and Tigranes, the Persian commander, and 
 forty thousand of his men, slain. Six years later the career of Xerxes 
 was terminated by assassination, when he was succeeded on the 
 throne by his son, Artaxerx' es Longim' anus. 
 
 15. In the meantime, Athens had been rebuilt by the vigor and 
 energy of Themis' tocles, and the Piras' us fortified, and connected, 
 by long walls, with the town, while Sparta looked with ill-disguised 
 jealousy upon the growing power of a rival city. But the eminence 
 which Themis' tocles had attained provoked the envy of some of his 
 countrymen, and he was condemned to exile by the same process of 
 ostracism which he himself had before directed against Aristides. 
 Being afterwards charged with conspiring against the liberties of 
 Greece, he sought refuge in Persia, where he is said to have ended 
 his life by poison. Cimon, the son of Miltiades, ^succeeded Themis'- 
 tocles in the chief direction of Athenian affairs, while Pausanias, the 
 hero of Plata?' a, was at the head of the Spartans. Under these 
 leaders the confederate Greeks waged successful war upon the de- 
 pendencies of Persia in the islands of the JK f gean, and on the coasts 
 of Thrace and Asia Minor. The Ionian cities were aided in a suc- 
 cessful revolt ; Cy' prus 2 was wrested from the power of the Per- 
 sians ; and Byzan'tium, 3 already a flourishing city, fell, with all its 
 wealth, into the hands of the Grecians. (B. C. 476. )' 
 
 16. Cimon carried on a successful war against Persia many years 
 later, during which the commercial power and wealth of the Athe- 
 nians were continually increasing ; but both parties finally becoming 
 tired of the contest, after the death of Cimon a treaty of peace was 
 concluded with the Persian monarch, which stipulated that the 16- 
 
 1. Myc' ale was a promontory of Ionia in Asia Minor, opposite the southerr extremity of the 
 island of Samos. (Map No. IV.) 
 
 2. Cy' prus is a large and fertile island near the north-eastern angle of the Mediterranean, 
 between Asia Minor and Syria : greatest length, one hundred and thirty-two miles ; average 
 breadth, from thirty to thirty-five miles. Under the oppressive rule of the Turks, who con- 
 quered the island from the Venetians in 1571, agriculture was greatly neglected, ar.d the popu- 
 lation reduced to one-seventh of its former nu iiber. (Maps Nos. IV. and V.) 
 
 3. Byzari tium, now Constantinople. See lescription, p, 218.
 
 CHAI-. IV.] GRECIAN HISTORY. 81 
 
 nian cities in Asia should be left in the free enjoyment of their inde- 
 pendence, and that no Persian army should come within three days' 
 march of the sca-coast. a 
 
 17. While the war with Persia continued, a sense of common dan- 
 gers had united the Greeks in a powerful and prosperous confederacy, 
 but now jealousies broke out between several of the rival cities, 
 particularly Athens and Sparta, which led to political dissensions 
 and civil wars, the cause of the final ruin of the Grecian republics. 
 The authority of Ciinon among the Athenians had gradually yielded 
 to the growing influence of his rival Per' icles, who, bold, artful, and 
 eloquent, a general, philosopher, and statesman, managed the 
 multitude at his will, and by his patronage of literature and the arts, 
 and the extension of. the Athenian power, raised Athens to the sum- 
 mit of her renown. Sparta looked on with ill-disguised jealousy as 
 island after island in the ^E'gcan yielded to the sway of Athens, and 
 saw not with unconcern the colonies of her rival peopling the wind 
 ing shores of Thrace and Macedon. Athens had become the mis 
 tress of the seas, while her commerce engrossed nearly the whole 
 trade of the Mediterranean. 
 
 18. But Sparta was also powerful in her resources, and in the 
 military renown and warlike character of her people, and she dis- 
 dained the luxuries that were enervating the Athenians. Complaints 
 and reclamations were frequent on both sides ; and occasions for 
 war, when sought by both parties, are not long delayed. But while 
 the Spartans were secretly favoring the enemies of Athens, although 
 still in avowed allegiance with her, Laconia was laid waste by an 
 earthquake (464 B. C.), and Sparta became a heap of ruins. A re 
 volt of the Helots followed ; Sparta itself was endan- m THIED 
 gered ; and the remnant of the Messenians, making a MESSEMAX 
 vigorous effort to recover their freedom, fortified the 
 memorable hill of Ithome, the ancient citadel of their fathers. 
 Here, for a long time, they valiantly defended themselves ; and the 
 Spartans were compelled to invoke the Athenians and others to their 
 assistance. (461 B. C.) After several years' duration, the third and 
 last Messenian war was terminated by an honorable capitulation of 
 the Messenians, who were allowed to retire from the Peloponnesus 
 
 a. The story of this famous treaty, however, generally called the Cimonian treaty, and attrib- 
 uted to Cimon himself, has been regarded by .some writers as a fiction, which, originating in 
 the schools of Greek rhetoricians, was transmitted thence through the orators to the historians. 
 fSee T'drwall, i. p. 305, and note.) Crote, however, v. 330-42, adraiU the reality of the treaty 
 but places it after the death of Cimon.
 
 S2 AXCIENT HISTORY. [PAET I. 
 
 with their property and their families, and to join the Athenian col- 
 ony of Naupac' tus. 
 
 19. While the Athenians were engaged in hostilities with several 
 of their northern neighbors, Sparta sent her forces into the Boeo- 
 tian territory, to counteract the growing influence of Athens in 
 that quarter. The indignant Athenians marched out to meet them, 
 but were worsted in the battle of Tan' agra. 1 In the following year, 
 however, they were enabled to wipe off the stain of their defeat by a 
 victory over the aggregate Theban and Bceotiau forces then in alli- 
 ance with Sparta ; whereby the authority and influence of Sparta 
 were again confined to the Peloponnesus. 
 
 20. Other events soon occurred to embitter the animosities of the 
 rival States, and prepare the way for a general war. Corinth, a 
 Dorian city favorable to Sparta, having become involved in a war 
 with Corey' ra, 2 one of her colonies, the latter applied for and ob- 
 tained assistance from Athens. Potidaa' a, 3 a Corinthian colony trib- 
 utary to Athens, soon after revolted, at the same time claiming and 
 
 .obtaining the assistance of the Corinthians; and thus in two in 
 
 stances were Athens and Corinth, though nominally at peace, brought 
 
 into conflict with each other as open enemies. The Corinthians, now 
 
 accusing Athens of interfering between them and their colonies, 
 
 IT FIRST charged her with violating a treaty of the .confederated 
 
 PKLOPONNE- States of the Peloponnesus, and easily engaged the Lace- 
 
 SIAN WAR. (jrginouiang m their quarrel. Such were the immediate 
 
 causes which opened the First Pdoponncsian War. 
 
 21. The minor States of Greece took sides as inclination or inter- 
 est prompted, and nearly all were involved in the contest. The 
 Spartans and their confederates were the most powerful by land, 
 the Athenians by sea ; and each began the war by displaying its 
 strength on its peculiar element. While a Spartan army of sixty 
 thousand, led by their king, Archidamus, ravaged At' tica, and sat 
 down before the very gates of Athens, the naval force of the Atheu 
 
 1. Tan' agra, a city near the south-eastern extremity of Boeutia, was situated on an emi- 
 nence on the northern bank of the river Asopus, and near its mouth. (Map No. 1.) 
 
 2. Corey' ra, now Corfu, the most important, although not the largest, of the Ionian islands, 
 is situated near the coast of Epirus, in the Ionian Sea. At its northern extremity it is separated 
 from the coast by a channel only three-fifths of a mile wide. The strongly-fortified city of Corfu, 
 the capital of the Ionian Republic, stands on the site of the ancient city of Corey' ra, on the 
 eastern side of the island. 
 
 3. Potidai' a was situated on the isthmus that connects the most western of the three Mace- 
 donian peninsulas in the JE' gean with the main land. There are no remains of the city exist 
 
 ,ing. (Map No. I.)
 
 CHAP. IV.] GRECIAN HISTORY. 83 
 
 ians, consisting of nearly two hundred galleys, desolated the coasts of 
 the Peloponnesus. (B. C. 431.) The Spartans being recalled to pro- 
 tect their own homes, Per' icles himself, at the head of the largest 
 force mustered by the Athenians during the war, spread desolation 
 over the little territory of Meg' ara, 1 then in alliance with Sparta. 
 
 22. In the following year (B. C. 430) the Spartan force a second 
 time invaded At' tica, when the Athenians again took refuge within 
 their Avails ; but here the plague, a calamity more dreadful than war, 
 attacked them, and swept away multitudes of the citizens, and many 
 of the principal men. In the third year of the war, Per' icles him- 
 self fell a victim to its ravages. Before this, Potidae' a had surren- 
 dered to the Athenians (B. C. 430), who banished the inhabitants, 
 and gave their vacant lands and houses to new colonists ; and when 
 Platse' a, after a siege of three years, was compelled to surren- 
 der to the Spartans, the latter cruelly put the little remnant of the 
 garrison to death, while the women and children were made slaves 
 (B. C. 427.) 
 
 23. After the struggle had continued with various success ten 
 years, both parties became anxious for peace, and a treaty, for a 
 term of fifty years, called the peace of Nic' ias, was concluded, on 
 the basis of a mutual restitution of all conquests made during the 
 war. (421 B. C.) Yet interest and inclination, and the ambitious 
 views of party leaders among the Athenians, were not long in find- 
 ing plausible pretexts for renewing the struggle. The Boeotian, 
 Megarian, and Corinthian allies of Sparta, refused to accede to the 
 terms of the treaty by making the required surrenders, and Sparta 
 had no power to compel them, while Athens would accept no less 
 than she had bargained for. 
 
 24. At the head of the party which aimed at severing the ties 
 that bound Athens and Sparta together, was Alcibiades, a wealthy 
 Athenian, and nephew of Per' icles, a man ambitious, bold, and 
 eloquent, an artful demagogue, but corrupt and unprincipled, and 
 reckless of the means he used to accomplish his purposes. By his 
 artifices he involved the Spartans in a war with their recent allies 
 the Ar' gives, and induced the Athenians to send an armament 
 against the Dorian island of Melos, 2 which had provoked tie enmity 
 
 1. Meg' ara, a city of At' tica, and capital of a district of the same name, was about twenty- 
 flte miles west, or north-west, of Athens, and was connected with the port of Nis' sa on the 
 Saron' ic Gulf by two walls similar to those which connected Athens and the Pirse' us. Th 
 miserable village of Meg' ara occupies a part of the site of the ancient city. (Map No. I.) 
 
 2. Melos now called JHilo, is an island belonging to thn group of the Cyc' lades, about seventy
 
 ANCIENT HISTORY. L P A RT I 
 
 of Athens by its attachment to Sparta, and which was compelled, 
 after a vigorous siege, to surrender at discretion. With deliberate 
 cruelty the conquerors, imitating the Spartans at the reduction of 
 Platge' a, put to death all the adult citizens, and enslaved the women 
 and children an act which provoked universal indignation through- 
 out Greece. (B. C. 416.) 
 
 25. Soon after the surrender of Melos, the Athenians, at the in- 
 stigation of Alcibiades, fitted out an expedition against Sicily, 1 un- 
 der the plea of delivering a people in the western part of the island 
 from the tyranny of the Syracasans, 2 a Dorian colony ; but, in reality, 
 to establish the Athenian supremacy in the island. (415 B. C.) 
 v. SICILIAN The armament fitted out on this occasion, the most 
 EXPEDITION-, powerful that had ever left a Grecian port, was intrust 
 ed to the joint command of Alcibiades, Nic' ias, and Lam' achus ; 
 but ere the fleet had reached its destination, Alcibiades was sum- 
 moned home on the absurd charge of impiety and sacrilege, con 
 nected with designs against the State itself. Fearing to trust 
 himself to the giddy multitude in a trial for life, he at once threw 
 himself upon the generosity of his open enemies, and sought refuge 
 
 miles east from the southern part of Laconia. It has one of the best harbors in the Grecian 
 Archipelago. Near the town of Castro have been discovered the remains of a theatre built of 
 the finest marble, and also numerous catacombs cut in the solid rock. {Map No. III.) 
 
 1. Sicily, the largest, most important, most fruitful, and most celebrated island of the Medi 
 torranean, is separated from the southern extremity of Italy by the strait of Messina, only two 
 miles across, and is eighty-five miles distant from Cape Bon in Africa. It is of a triangular shape, 
 and was anciently called Trinacria, from its terminating in three promontories. Sicily, the 
 name by which it is usually known, seems to have been derived from the Siculi, its earliest 
 known inhabitants. Its length east and west is about two hundred and fifteen miles ; greatest 
 breadth, one hundred and fifty miles. The volcano ^tna, the most celebrated of European 
 mountains, near the eastern coast of the island, rises to the height of nearly eleven thousand 
 feet above the level of the sea. (Map No. VIII. For history of Sicily, see p. 115.) 
 
 2. Syracuse, the most famous of the cities of Sicily, was situated on the south-eastern coast, 
 partly on a small island, and partly on the main land. Among the existing remains of the 
 ancient city are the prisons, cut in the solid rock, which have been admirably described by 
 Cicero in his oration against Verres. The catacombs, also excavated in the solid rock, and 
 consisting of one principal street and several smaller ones, are of vast extent, and may be truly 
 called a city of the dead. The modern city, however, containing a population of twelve or fif- 
 teen thousand inhabitants, has little except its ancient renown, its noble harbor, and the ex- 
 treme beauty of its situation, to recommend it. (Map No. VIII.) " Its streets are narrow and 
 dirty ; its nobles poor ; its lower orders ignorant, superstitious, idle, and addicted to festivals. 
 Much of its fertile land is become a pestilential marsh ; and that commerce which once filled 
 the finest port in Europe with the vessels of Italy, Rhodes, Alexandria, Carthage, and every 
 other maritime power, is now confined to a petty coasting trade. Such is modern Syracuse. 
 Yet the sky which canopies it is still brilliant and serene ; the golden grain is still ready to 
 spring almost spontaneously from its fields ; the azure waves still beat against its walls to 
 send its navies over the main ; nature is still prompt to pour forth her bounties will a liberal 
 hand; but man, alas ! is changed ; his liberty is lost ; and with that, the gonius of a nation 
 risc^, sinks, and is extinguished." Hughes' Greece.
 
 CHAP. IV.] GRECIAN HISTORY. 85 
 
 at Sparta. When, soon after, he heard that the Athenians had con- 
 demned him to death, " I hope," said he, " to show them that I am 
 gtill alive." 
 
 26. By the death of Lam'achus, Nic'ias was soon after left in 
 sole c )mmand of the Athenian forces before Syracuse, but he wasted 
 his time in fortifying his camp, and in useless negotiations, until the 
 Syracusans, having received succor from Corinth and Sparta under 
 the famous Spartan general Gylip'pus, were able to bid him defi- 
 ance. Although new forces were sent out from Athens, yet the 
 Athenians were defeated in several engagements, when, still linger- 
 ing in the island, their entire fleet was eventually destroyed by the 
 Syracusans, who thus became masters of the sea. The Athenian 
 forces then attempted to retreat, but were overtaken and compelled 
 to surrender. (B. C. 413.) The generals destroyed themselves, on 
 learning that their death had been decreed by the Syracusan assem- 
 bly. The common soldiers, to the number of seven thousand, were 
 crowded together during seventy days in the gloomy prisons of 
 Syracuse, when most of the survivors were taken out and sold as slaves. 
 
 27. The aid which Gylip' pus had rendered the Syracusans again 
 brought Sparta and Athens in direct conflict, and opened the second 
 Peloponnesian/war. The result of the Athenian expe- 
 dition was the greatest calamity that had fallen upon PELOPONNE 
 Athens. Several of her allies, instigated by Alcibiades, SIAN WARl 
 who was now active in the Spartan councils, revolted ; and the 
 power of Tisapher' nes, the most powerful satrap of the king of Persia 
 in Asia Minor, was on the point of being thrown into the scale against 
 the Athenians, when a rupture between the Spartans and Alcibiades 
 changed the aspect of affairs, and for awhile revived the waning 
 glory of Athens. By his intrigues, Alcibiades, who now sought a 
 reconciliation with his countrymen, detached Tisapher' nes from the 
 interests of Sparta, and effected a change of government at Athens 
 from a democracy to an aristocracy of four hundred of the nobility ; 
 but the new government, dreading the ambition of Alcibiades, re- 
 fused to recall him. Another change soon followed. The defeat of 
 the Athenian navy at Eretria, 1 and the revolt of Euboe' a, produced 
 a new revolution at Athens, by which the government of the four 
 hundred was overthrown, and democracy restored. Alcibiades was 
 immediately recalle 1 ; but before his return he aided in destroying 
 
 1. Eretria was a town on the western coast of the is and of Euboa'a. Its ruins are still tc 
 be seen ten or twelve miles outh-east from the presen'. Neg' ropont. (Map No. I.)
 
 86 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAEI L 
 
 the Peloponuesian fleet in the battle of Cys' icus. 1 (B. C. 411.) 
 Soon after, Alcibiades was welcomed at Athens with great enthusi- 
 asm, a golden irown was decreed him, and he was appointed Com- 
 mander-in-chief of all the forces of the commonwealth both by land 
 and by sea. 
 
 28. Alcibiades was still destined to experience the instability of 
 fortune, for when one of his generals, contrary to instructions, attacked 
 the Spartan fleet and was defeated, an unjust suspicion of treachery 
 fell upon Alcibiades ; the former charges against him were revived, 
 and he was deprived of his command and again banished. The 
 affairs of Sparta were retrieved by the crafty Lysan' der, a general 
 whose abilities the Athenians could not match since they had de- 
 prived themselves of the services of Alcibiades. The Spartan 
 general had the art to gain the confidence and cooperation of Cyrus, 
 a younger son of Darius No' thus, the Persian king, whom the latter 
 had invested with supreme authority over the whole maritime re- 
 gion of Asia Minor. 
 
 29. Aided by Persian gold, Lysan' der found no difficulty in man- 
 ning a numerous fleet, with which he met the Athenians at JE'gos- 
 Pot' amos. 2 Here, during several days, he declined a battle, but 
 seizing the opportunity when nearly all the Athenians were dispersed 
 on shore in quest of supplies, he attacked and destroyed all their 
 ships, with the exception of eight galleys, and took three thousand 
 prisoners. The fate of the prisoners is a shocking proof of the bar- 
 barous feelings and manners of the age, for all of them were re- 
 morselessly put to death, in revenge for some recent cruelties of the 
 Athenians, who had thrown down a precipice the crews of two captured 
 vessels, and had passed a decree for cutting off the right thumb of 
 the prisoners whose capture they anticipated in the coming battle. 
 
 30. Thus, in one short hour, by the culpable negligence of their 
 generals, were the affairs of the Athenians changed from an equality 
 of resources with their enemy, to hopeless, irretrievable ruin. The 
 maritime allies of Athens immediately submitted to Lysander, who 
 directed the Athenians throughout Greece to repair at once to 
 Athens, with threats of death to all whom he found elsewhere ; and 
 
 1. Cys' icus was an island of the Propon' tis, (now sea of Marmora,) on the northern coast 
 of Mys' ia. It was separated from the main land by a very narrow channel, which baa since 
 been filled up, and it is now a peninsula. ( Map No. IV.) 
 
 2. JE' gos-Pot' n/nos, ("goat's river") was a small stream of the Thracian Chersonesus, which 
 flows into the Hellespont from the west. The place where the Athenians landed, appears te 
 bjve been " a mere opwi beach, without any habitations.'' (Thirwall, i. 485.) (Map No. I V )
 
 . IV.] GRECIAN HISTORY. 8T 
 
 when famine began to prey upon the collected multitude in the 
 city, he appeared before the Piras' us with his fleet, while a large 
 force from Sparta blockaded Athens by land. The Athenians had 
 no hopes of effectual resistance, and only delayed the surrender to 
 plead for the best terms that could be obtained from the conquerors. 
 Compelled at last to submit to whatever terms were dictated to them, 
 they agreed to destroy the long walls, and the fortifications of the 
 Pirae'us; to surrender all their ships but twelve; to restore 'their 
 exiles ; to relinquish their conquests ; to become a member of the 
 Peloponuesian confederacy; and to serve Sparta in all her expedi- 
 tions, whether by sea or by land. (B. C. 404.) Thus closed the 
 second Peloponnesian war, in the profound humiliation of Athens. 
 
 31. A change of government followed, as directed by Lysander, 
 and conformable to the aristocratic character of the Spartan institu- 
 tions. All authority was placed in the hands of thirty archons, 
 known as the Thirty Tyrants, whose power was supported by a 
 Spartan garrison. Their cruelty and rapacity knew no bounds, and 
 filled Athens with universal dismay. A large band of exiles soon 
 accumulated in the friendly Theban territories, and choosing Thrasy- 
 bulus for their leader, they resolved to strike a blow for the deliver- 
 ance of their country. They first seized a small fortress on the 
 frontiers of Attica, when, their numbers rapidly increasing, they were 
 enabled to seize the Pirae' us, where they defeated the force which 
 was brought against them. The rule of the tyrants was overthrown, 
 and a council of ten was elected to fill their places ; but the latter 
 emulated the wickedness of their predecessors, and, when the popu- 
 lace turned against them, applied to Sparta for assistance. But the 
 Spartan councils were divided, and eventually, by the aid of Sparta 
 herself, the ten were deposed, when, the Spartan garrison being 
 withdrawn, Athens again became a democracy, with the power in 
 the hands of the people. (B. C. 403.) 
 
 32. It was during the rule of democracy in Athens that the wise 
 and virtuous Socrates, the best and greatest of Grecian philosophers, 
 was condemned to death on the absurd charge of impiety, and of 
 corrupting the morals of the young. His accusers appear to have 
 been instigated by personal resentment, which he had innocently pro- 
 voked, and by envy of his many virtues ; and the result shows not 
 only the instability, but the moral obliquity also, of the Athenian 
 character. The defence which Socrates made before his judges is 
 in the tone of a man who demands rewards and honors, instead of
 
 83 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAST L 
 
 the punishment of a malefactor ; and when the sentence of death had 
 been pronounced against him, he spent the remaining days which the 
 laws allowed him in impressing on the minds of his friends the most 
 sublime lessons in philosophy and virtue ; and when the fatal hour 
 arrived, drank the poison with as much composure as if it had been 
 the last draught of a cheerful banquet. 
 
 33. Cyrus has been mentioned as one of the sons of Darius No' thus, 
 and governor of the maritime region of Asia Minor. As his ambi- 
 tion led him to aspire to the throne of Persia, to the exclusion of 
 his elder brother, Artaxerxes Mnemon, he had aided Sparta in the 
 Peloponnesian war, with the view of claiming, in return, her assist- 
 ance against his brother, should he ever have occasion for it. When, 
 therefore, the latter was promoted to the throne in accordance with 
 the dying bequest of his father, Cyrus prepared for the execution 
 of his design by raising an army of a hundred thousand Persian 
 and barbarian troops, which he strengthened by an auxiliary force 
 of thirteen thousand Grecians, drawn principally from the Greek 
 cities of Asia. On the Grecian force, commanded by the Spartan 
 Clear' chus, Cyrus placed his main reliance for success. 
 
 34. With these forces he marched from Sardis in the Spring of 
 the year 401, and with little difficulty penetrated into the heart of 
 the Persian empire, when lie was met by Artaxerx' es, seventy miles 
 from Babylon, at the head of nine hundred thousand men. In the 
 battle which followed, this immense force was at first routed ; but 
 Cyrus, rashly charging the centre of the guards who surrounded hia 
 brother, was slain on the field, when the whole of his barbarian 
 troops took to flight, leaving the Greeks almost alone in the midst 
 of a hostile country, more than a thousand miles from any friendly 
 territory. 
 
 35. The Persians proposed to the Grecians terms of accommo- 
 dation, but having invited their leaders to a conference they mer- 
 cilessly put them to death. No alternative now remained to the 
 Greeks but to submit to the enemy, or fight their way back to 
 their native country. Where submission was death or slavery they 
 could not hesitate which course to pursue. They chose Xeu' ophon, 
 a young Athenian, for their leader, and under his conduct ten thou- 
 sand of their number, after a march of four months, succeeded in 
 reaching Grecian settlements on the banks of the Eux' ine. Xen 'o- 
 phon himself, who afterwards became the historian of his country, 
 has left an admirable narrative of the " Retreat of the Ten Thou
 
 CHAP. IV.] GRECIAN HISTORY. 89 
 
 sand," written with great clearness and singular modesty. It is one 
 of the most interesting works bequeathed us by antiquity, as the 
 Retreat itself is the most famous military expedition on record. 
 
 36. The part which the Greek cities of Asia took in the expedi 
 tion of Cyrus involved them in a war with Persia, in which they 
 were aided by the Spartans, who, under their king Agesilaus, de- 
 feated Tisapher' nes in a great battle in the plains of Sardis (B. C 
 395) ; but Agesilaus was soon after recalled to aid his yjj TIimD 
 countrymen at home in another Peloponnesian war, which PELOPOXNE- 
 had been fomented chiefly by the Persian king himself, SIAX WAa ' 
 in order to save his own dominions from the ravages of the Spartans. 
 Artaxerx' es supplied Couon, an Athenian, with a fleet which defeat- 
 ed the Spartan navy ; and Persian gold rebuilt the walls of Athens. 
 On the other hand, Athens and her allies were defeated in the 
 vicinity of Corinth, and on the plains of Coronea. 1 (B. C. 394). 
 Finally, after the war had continued eight years, articles of peace 
 were arranged between Artaxerx' es and the Spartan Antal' cidas, 
 hence called the peace of Antal' cidas, and ratified by all the parties 
 engaged in the war, almost without opposition. (387 B. C.) The 
 Greek cities in Asia, together with the islands Clazom'enae 2 and 
 Cy' prus, were given up to Persia, and the separate independence of 
 all the other Greek cities was guaranteed, with the exception of the 
 islands Im' brus, Lem' nos, and Scy' rus, 3 which, as of old, were to 
 belong to Athens. 
 
 37. The terms of the peace of Antal' cidas, directed by the king of 
 Persia, were artfully contrived by him to dissolve the power of 
 Greece into nearly its original elements, that Persia might there- 
 after have less to fear from a united Greek confederacy, or the pre- 
 ponderating influence of any one Grecian State. It was the un- 
 worthy jealousy of the Grecians, which the Persian knew how to 
 stimulate, that prompted them to give up to a barbarian the free 
 cities of Asia; and this is the darkest shade in the picture. Both 
 Athens and Sparta lost their former allies ; and though Sparta was 
 
 1. Coronea was a city of Bceotia, to the south-east of Chteronea, and two or three miles 
 south-west from the Copaic Lake. South of Coronea was Mount Helicon. (Map No. I.) 
 
 2. The Clazom' ente here mentioned was a small island near the Lydian coast, west of 
 Smyrna, and in what is now called the Gulf of Smyrna. (Map No. IV.) 
 
 3. Im' brus, Lem' nos, and Scy' rus, (now Imbro, Stalimene, and Scyro,) are islands of the 
 ^' gean. The first is about ten miles west from the entrance to the Ilel' lespont, and the second 
 about forty miles south-west. Scy' rus is afji >ut twenty-five miles north-east from Eubce' a, 
 (Map No. III.)
 
 90 AKCIENT HISTORY. [PAET L 
 
 the rnflst stroi.^ly ii/ favor of the terms of the treaty, yet Athens 
 was the greatest gainer, for she once more became, although a small, 
 yet an independent and powerful State. 
 
 38. It was riot long before ambition, and the resentment of past 
 injuries, involved Sparta in new wars. She compelled Man tinea, 1 
 which had formerly been her unwilling ally, to throw down her 
 walls, and dismember the city into its original divisions, under the 
 pretext that the Mantineans had supplied one of the enemies of 
 Sparta with corn during the preceding war, and had evaded their 
 share of service in the Spartan army. The jealousy of Sparta was 
 next aroused against the rising power of Olyn' thus, 8 which had 
 become engaged in hostilities with some rival cities ; and the Spar- 
 tans readily accepted an invitation of the latter to send an army to 
 their aid. As one of the Spartan forces was marching through the 
 Theban territories on this errand, the Spartan general fraudulently 
 seized upon the Cadmeia, or Theban citadel, although a state of 
 peace existed between Thebes and Sparta. (B. C. 382.) 
 
 39. The political morality of the Spartans is clearly exhibited in 
 the arguments by which Agesilaus justified this palpable breach of 
 the treaty of Antal' cidas. He declared that the only question for 
 the Spartan people to consider, was, whether they were gainers or 
 losers by the transaction. The assertion made by the Athenians on 
 a former occasion was confirmed, that, " of all States, Sparta had 
 most glaringly shown by her conduct that in her political transactions 
 she measured honor by inclination, and justice by expediency." 
 
 40. On the seizure of the Theban citadel the most patriotic of 
 the citizens fled to Athens, while a faction, upheld by the Spartan 
 garrison, ruled the city. After the Thebans had submitted to this 
 yoke four years they rose against their tyrants and put them to 
 leath, and being re-enforced by the exiles, and an Athenian army, 
 soon forced the Spartan garrison to capitulate. (B. C. 379.) Pelop'- 
 idas and Epaminon' das now appeared on the field of action, and by 
 their abilities raised Thebes, hitherto of but little political import 
 
 1. Mantinta was in the eastern part of Arcadia, seventeen miles west from Ar' gos. It w*. 
 situatedin a marshy plain through which flowed the small river A' phis, whose waters found 
 a subterranean passage to the sea. Mantinea is wholly indebted for its celebrity to the great 
 battle fought in its vicinity in the year 362 between the Spartans and Thebans. (See p. 91.) 
 The locality of the battle was about three miles southwest from the city. The ruins of the 
 ancient town may be seen near the wretched modern hamlet of Palaiopoli. (Map No. I.) 
 
 2. Olyn' thus was ir. the south-eastern part of Macedonia, six or seven miles north-east from 
 Potidae' a. (Map No. I.)
 
 CHAP IV.] GRECIAN HISTORY. 91 
 
 ance, to the first rank 'n power among the Grecian States. Al- 
 though Athens joined Thebes in the beginning of the contest, yet 
 she afterwards took the side of the Spartans. At Teg'yra, 1 Pe 
 lop' idas defeated a greatly superior force, and killed the two Spartan 
 generals ; at Leuc' tra," Epaminon' das, with a force of six thousand 
 Thebans, defeated the Lacedaemo' nian army of more than double 
 that number. (B. C. July 8, 371.) Epaminon' das afterwards in- 
 vaded Laconia, and appeared before the very gates of Sparta, where 
 a hostile force had not been seen during five hundred years ; and at 
 Mantinea he defeated the enemy in the most sanguinary contest ever 
 fought between Grecians. (B. C. 362.) But Epaminon' das fell in 
 the moment of victory, and the glory of Thebes perished with him. 
 A general peace was soon after established, on the single condition 
 that each State should retain its respective possessions. 
 
 41. Four years after the battle of Mantinea the Grecian States 
 again became involved in domestic hostilities, known as the Sacred 
 War, the second in Grecian history to which that epi- V1II . SEC OND 
 thet was applied.* During the preceding war, the Pho- SACKED WAB. 
 clans, 3 although in alliance with Thebes by treaty, had shown such a 
 predilection in favor of Sparta, that the animosity of the Thebans 
 was roused against their reluctant ally, and they availed themselves 
 of the first opportunity to show their resentment. The Phocians 
 having taken into cultivation a portion of the plain of Del' phos, 
 which was deemed sacred to Apollo, the Thebans caused them to 
 be accused of sacrilege before the Amphictyon' ic council, which con 
 demned them to pay a heavy fine. The Phocians refused obedience, 
 and, encouraged by the Spartans, on whom a similar penalty had 
 been imposed for their treacherous occupation of the Theban citadel, 
 took up arms to resist the decree, and, under their leader, Philome- 
 lus, plundered the sacred treasures of Del' phos to obtain the means 
 for carrying on the war. 
 
 1. Teg' yra was a small village of Bceotia, near the northern shore of the Copaic Lako. 
 (Map No. I.) 
 
 2. Leuc' tra (now Lefka) was a small town of Bceotia, about ten miles south-west from 
 Thebes, and four or five miles from the Corinthian Gulf. It is now only a heap of ruins. 
 (Map No. I.) 
 
 3. PhScis was a small tract of country, bounded on the north by Thes' saly, east by Boeotia, 
 south by the Corinthian Gulf, and west by Locris, ^Etolia, and Doris. (Map No. I.) 
 
 a. The first sacred war was carried on against the inhabitants of the town of Cris' sa, on the 
 northern shore of the Corinthian Gulf, in the time of Solon. The Crisseans were charged witk 
 extortion and violence towards the strangers who passed through their territory en their way 
 to the Delphic sanctuary. " Cris' sa was razed to the ground, its harbor choked up, and iU 
 fruitful plain turned into a wildernest. ' Thirwall, \. 152.
 
 92 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART L 
 
 42. The Thebans, Locrians, 1 Thessalians, and nearly all the States 
 of Northern Greece, leagued against the Phocians, while Athens 
 and Sparta declared in their favor, but gave them little active as- 
 sistance. At first the Thebans, confident in their strength, put 
 their prisoners to death, as abettors of sacrilege ; but Philomelus 
 retaliated so severely upon some Thebans who had fallen into his 
 power, as to prevent a repetition of the crime. After the war had 
 continued five years, a new power was brought forward on the 
 theatre of Grecian history, in the person of Philip, who had recently 
 established himself on the throne of Mac' edon, and whom some of 
 the Thessalian allies of Thebes applied to for aid against the Pho- 
 cians. The interference of Philip forms an important epoch in 
 Grecian affairs, at which we interrupt our narrative to trace the 
 growth of the Macedonian monarchy down to the time when its 
 history became united with that of its southern neighbors. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 GRECIAN HISTORY FROM THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PHILIP ON THE THRONE OF 
 MAC' EDON TO THE REDUCTION OF GREECE TO A ROMAN PROVINCE : 
 
 360 TO 146 B. c. = 214 YEARS. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. Geographical account of Macedonia. 2. Early history of Macedonia. Gre- 
 cian rulers. PHILIP OF MAC' EDON. 3. Philip's residence at Thebes. 4. His usurpation of the 
 kingdom of Mac'edon. His wars with the Illyr' ians and other tribes. His first efforts against 
 the Phocians. 5. Philip reduces Phocis. Pecree of the Amphictyon' ic council against -Phocis. 
 Growing influence of Philip. 6. The ambitious projects of Philip. [Hlyr'ia. Epirus. Acar- 
 nania.] 7. Rupture between Philip and the Athenians. [Chersonesus.] Devotion of the 
 orator JEs' chines to Philip. [Amphis' sa.] Philip throws off the mask. [Elateia.] 8. Thebes 
 and Athens prepare to oppose him. Dissensions. 9. The masterly policy of Philip. The con- 
 federacy against him dissolved by the battle of Chieron6a. [Chseronea.] 10. Philip's treatment 
 of the Thebans and the Athenians. General congress of the Grecian States, and death of 
 Philip. 
 
 11. ALEXANDER succeeds Philip. He quells the revolt against him. His cruel treatment of 
 the Thebans. 12. Servility of Athens. Preparations of Alexander for his career of Eastern 
 conquest. 13. Results of his first campaign. [Gran' icus. Halicarnas' sus.] 14. He resumes 
 his march in the spring of 333. Defeats Darius at Is' sus. [Cappadocia. Cilic' ia. Is' sus.] 
 Results of the battle. Effect of Alexander's kindness. 15. Reduction of Palestine. [Gaza.] 
 Expedition into Egypt. [Alexandria.] Alexander returns and crosses the Euphrates in search 
 of Darius. 16. The opposing forces at the battle of Arbela. [Arbela. India.] 17. Results of 
 the battle, and death of Darius. 18. Alexander's residence at Babylon. His march beyond 
 
 1. The Lfarians proper inhabited a small territory on the northern shore of the Corinthian 
 Gulf, west of Phocis. There were other Locriau tribes north-east of b.I>cis, whose territory 
 Bordered on the Euboe' an Gulf. (Map No. I.)
 
 CHAP. IV.] GRECIAN HISTORY. 93 
 
 the Indus. [Hyphasis R.] 19. His ret -rn to Persia. [Persian Gulf. Gedrosia.] His mea? 
 ures for consolidating his empire. 20. His sickness and death. 21. His character. 22. A 
 judged of by his actions. The results of his conquests. [Seleucia.] 23. Contentions that followed 
 his death. 24. Grecian confederacy against Macedonian supremacy. Sparta and Tt ebes. Athena 
 is finally compelled to yield to Antip' ater. 25. Cassan' der's usurpation. Views and conquests 
 of Antig' onus. Final dissolution of the Macedonian empire. [Ip' sus. Pbryg' ia.] 
 
 20. The four kingdoms that arose on the ruins of the empire. Those of Egypt and Syria the 
 most powerful. 27. The empire of Cassan' der. Usurpation of Demetrius. Character of hi* 
 government. The war carried on against him. 28. Unsettled state of Mac' eilon, Greece, and 
 Western Asia. 29. Celtic invasion of Mac' edon. [Adriaf ic. Pannonia.] 30. Second Celtic 
 invasion. The Celts are repelled by the Phocians. Death of Brennus, their chief. 31. Antig'- 
 onus, son of Demetrius, recovers the throne of his father. Is invaded by Pjr'rhus, king of 
 Epirus. 32. Pyr' rhus marches into Southern Greece. Is repulsed by the Spartans, lie enters 
 Ar'gos. His death. 33. Remarks on the death of Pyr' rims. Ambitious views of Antig' onus 
 
 34. THE ACH.'E'AN LEAGUE. Aratus seizes Sicyon, which joins the league. 35. Aratus 
 rescues Corinth, which at iirst joins the league. Conduct of Athens and Sparta. 30. Antig'- 
 onus II. 37. League of the ^Etolians, who invade the Messenians. [/Etolia.] Defeat of Ara- 
 tus. General war between the respective members of the two leagues. 38. Results of this 
 war. The war between the Romans and Carthaginians. Policy of Philip II. of Mac' edon. 
 39. He enters into an alliance with the Carthaginians. His defeat at Apollonia. [Apollonia.] 
 40. He causes the death of Aratus. Roman intrigues in Greece. 41. Overthrow of Philip's 
 power. The Romans promise independence to Greece. 42. Remarks on the sincerity of the 
 promise. Treatment of the ^Etolians. Extinction of the Macedonian monarchy. [Pyd' na.] 
 43. Unjust treatment of the Achse'ans. Roman ambassadors insulted. 44. The Achse'an 
 war, and reduction of Greece to a Roman province. Remarks of Thirwall. 45. Henceforward 
 Grecian history is absorbed in that of Rome. Condition of Greece since the Persian wars. In 
 the days of Strabo. 
 
 COTEMPORARY HISTORY. 1. Cotemporarjfrannals of other nations : Persians Egyptians. 
 HISTORY or TIIK JEWS. 2. Rebuilding of the second temple of Jerusalem. The Jews during 
 the reigns of Xerxes and Artaxerxes. Nehemiah's administration. 3. Judea a part of the sat' 
 rapy of Syria. Judea after the division of Alexander's empire. Judea invaded by Ptolemy 
 Solcr. 4. Judea subject to Egypt. Ptolemy-Philadelphus. The Jews plaro themselves under 
 the rule of Syria. 5. Civil war among the Jews. Antiochus plunders Jerusalem. Attempts to 
 establish the Grecian polytheism. 6. Revolt of th Mac'cabees. 7. Continuation of the war 
 with Syria. [Bethoron.] Death of Judas Maccabeus. 8. The Syrians become masters of the 
 country. Prosperity of the Jews under Simon Maccabeus. 9. The remaining history of the 
 Jews. 
 
 10. GRECIAN COLONIES. Those of Thrace, Mac' edon. and Asia Minor. Of Italy, Sicily, and 
 Cyrenuica. 11. MAONA. GR.ECIA. Early settlements in western Italy and in Sicily. [Cumae. 
 Neap' olis. Nax'os. Gela. Messana. Agrigen' turn.] 12. On the south-eastern coast of 
 Italy. History of Syb' aris, Crotona, and Taren' turn. [Description of the same.] 13. First two 
 centuries of Sicilian history. [Him' era.] Gela and Agrigen' turn. The despot f.'elo. 14. Grow- 
 ing power of Syracuse under his authority. 15. The Carthaginians in Sicily defeated by Gelo. 
 fPanor' mus.] 16. Hiero and Thrasybiilus. [^5tna.] Revolution and change of government. 
 17. Civil commotions and renewed prosperity. [Kamarina.] 18. Syracuse and Agrigen' turn at 
 (lie time of the breaking out of the Peloponndgian war. The lon'ic and Durian cities of Sicily 
 during the struggle. Sicilian congress. 19. Quarrel between the cities of Selinusand Eges'ta. 
 [Description of the same.] The Athenian expedition to Sicily. [Cat' ana.] 20. Events up to 
 ihe beginning of the siege of Syracuse. 21. Death of Lam' achus, and arrival of Gylip' pus, the 
 Spartan. 22. Both parties reinforced various battles total defeat of the Athenians. 23. Cur- 
 thaginian encroachments in Sicily resisted by Dionys' ins the Elder. Division between the 
 Greek and Carthaginian territories. [Him' era.] 24. The administration of Timoleon. Of 
 Agath' ocles. The Romans become masters of Sicily. 
 
 25. CYRENA'ICA. Colonized by Lacedaemonians. Cyrene its chief city. Its ascendancy over 
 the Libyan tribes. War with the Egyptians. 2G. Tyranny of Agesilaus founding of Bar' c 
 the war which followed. Agesilaus. Civil dissensions. Camby'ses. 27. Subequ?.n: his- 
 to'y of Cyrene and Bar'ca. Distinguished Cyrtneans. Oyreneans mentioned i i Bible history.
 
 94 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAET L 
 
 1. MAC'' EDON, or Macedonia, whose boundaries varied greatly at 
 different times, had its south-eastern borders on the M' gean Sea, 
 while farther north it was bounded by the river Stry' mon, which 
 separated it from Thrace, and on the south by Thes' $aly and Epi- 
 rus. On the west Macedonia embraced, at times, many of the II- 
 lyrian tribes which bordered on the Adriatic. On the north the 
 natural boundary was the mountain chain of Use' mus. The prin- 
 cipal river of Macedonia was the Axius (now the Vardar), which fell 
 into the Thermaic Gulf, now called the Gulf of Salon' iki. 
 
 2. The history of Macedonia down to the time of Philip, the 
 father of Alexander the Great, is involved in great obscurity. The 
 early Macedonians appear to have been an Illyr' ian tribe, differ- 
 ent in race and language from the Hellenes or Greeks : but Herod'- 
 otus states that the Macedonian monarchy was founded by Greeks 
 from Ar'gos; and according to Greek writers, twelve or fiftee.n 
 
 i. PHILIP OF Grecian princes reigned there before the accession of 
 MAC'EDOX. Philip, who took charge of the government about the 
 year 360 B. C., not as monarch, but as guardian of the infant son 
 of his elder brother. 
 
 3. Philip had previously passe ^ several years at Thebes, as a 
 hostage, where he eagerly availed himself of the excellent oppor- 
 tunities which that city afforded for the acquisition of various kinds 
 of knowledge. He successfully cultivated the study of the Greek 
 language ; and in the conversation of such generals and statesmen 
 as Epaminon' das, Pelop' idas, and their friends, became acquainted 
 with the details of the military tactics of the Greeks, and learned 
 the nature and working of their democratical institutions. Thus, 
 with the superior mental and physical endowments which nature had 
 given him, he became eminently fitted for the part which he after- 
 wards bore in the intricate game of Grecian politics. 
 
 4. After Philip had successfully defended the throne of Mac' edon 
 during several years, in behalf of his nephew, his military successes 
 enabled him to take upon himself the kingly title, probably with the 
 unanimous consent of both the army and the nation. He annexed 
 several Thracian towns to his dominions, reduced the Illyr' ians and 
 other nations on his northern and western borders, and was at times 
 an ally, and at others an enemy, of Athens. At length, during the 
 sacred war against the Phocians, the invitation which he received 
 from the Thessalian allies of Thebes, as already noticed afforded 
 him a pretence, which he had long coveted, for a more active inter-
 
 CHAP. IV.] GRECIAN HISTORY. 95 
 
 ference in the affairs of his southern neighbors. On entering Thes'- 
 saly, however, on his southern march, he was at first repulsed by the 
 Phocians and their allies, and obliged to retire into Macedonia, but, 
 soon returning at the head of a more numerous army, he defeated 
 the enemy in a decisive battle, and would have marched upon Phocis 
 at once to terminate the war, but he found the pass of Thermop'yhe 
 strongly guarded by the Athenians, and thought it prudent to with- 
 draw his forces. 
 
 5. Still the sacred war lingered, although the Phocians desired 
 peace ; but the revengeful spirit of the Thebans was not allayed ; 
 Philip was again urged to crush the profaners of the national re- 
 ligion, and having succeeded, in spite of the warnings of the patriotic 
 Demosthenes, in lulling the suspicions of the Athenians with pro- 
 posals of an advantageous peace, he marched into Phocis, and com- 
 pelled the enemy to surrender at discretion. The Amphictyon' ic 
 council, being now reinstated in its ancient authority, with the power 
 of Philip to enforce its decrees, doomed Phocis to lose her inde- 
 pendence forever, to have her cities levelled with the ground, and 
 her population, after being distributed in villages of not more than 
 fifty dwelling,?, to pay a yearly tribute of sixty talents to the temple, 
 until the whole amount of the plundered treasure should be restored. 
 Finally, the two votes which the Phocians had possessed in the 
 Amphictyon' ic council were transferred to the king of Mac' edon 
 and his successors. The influence which Philip thus obtained in 
 the councils of the Grecians paved the way for the overthrow of 
 their liberties. 
 
 6. From an early period of his career Philip had aspired to the 
 sovereignty of all Greece, as a secondary object that should prepare 
 the way for the conquest of Persia, the great aim and end of all his 
 ambitious projects ; and after the close of the sacred war he accord- 
 ingly exerted himself to extend his power and influence, either by 
 arms or negotiation, on every side of his dominions; but his in- 
 trigues in At' tica, and among the Peloponnesian States, were for a 
 time counteracted by the glowing and patriotic eloquence of the 
 Athenian Demosthenes, the greatest of Grecian orators. In his 
 military operations Philip ravaged Illyr' ia 1 reduced Thes' saly 
 more nearly to a Macedonian province conquered a part of the 
 
 1. The term Illyr' ia, or Illyr' icum was applied to the country t ordering on the eastern shore 
 of the Adriatic, and extending from the northern extremity of the Gulf south to the borders 
 of Epirus. ( Map No. VIII.)
 
 96 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART I 
 
 Thracian territory extended his power into Epirus and Acarnania' 
 and would -have gained a footing in E' lis and Achaia, on the 
 western coast of the Peloponnesus, had it not been for the watchful 
 jealousy of Athens, which concerted a league among several of the 
 States to repel his encroachments. 
 
 7. The first open rupture with the Athenians occurred while 
 Philip was engaged in subduing the Grecian cities on the Thracian 
 coast of the Hel' lespont, in what was called the Thracian Chersone- 
 sus. a A little later, the Amphictyon' ic council, through the influ- 
 ence of JEs' chines, an orator second only to Demosthenes, but 
 secretly devoted to the interests of the king of Mac' edon, appointed 
 Philip to conduct a war against Ampins' sa, 3 a Locrian town, which 
 had been convicted of a sacrilege similar to that of the Phocians. 
 It was now that Philip, hastily passing through Thrace at the head 
 of &, powerful army, fkst threw off the mask, and revealed his de- 
 signs against the liberties of Greece by seizing and fortifying 
 Elateia 4 the capital of Phueis which was conveniently situated for 
 commanding the entrance into Boeotia. 
 
 & The Thebans and the Athenians, suddenly awaking from their 
 dream of security, from which all the eloquent appeals of Demosthe- 
 nes had not hitherto been able to arouse them, prepared to defend 
 their territories from invasion ; but most of the Peloponnesian States 
 kept aloof through indifference, rather than through fear. Even in 
 Thebes and Athens there were parties whom the gold and persua- 
 sions of Philip had converted into allies; and when the armies 
 marched forth to battle, dissensions pervaded their ranks. The 
 spirit of Grecian liberty had already been extinguished. 
 
 9. The masterly policy of Philip still led him to declare that the 
 sacred war against Amphis' sa, with the conduct of which he had 
 
 1. Acarnania, lying south of Epirus, also bordered on the Adriatic, or Ionian sea. From 
 .Aitoliii on the east it was separated by the Achelotis, probably the largest river in Greece. 
 The Acarnanians were almost constantly at war with the -lEtolians, and were far behind the 
 rest of the Greeks in mental culture. (Map No. I.) 
 
 2. The Thracian Chersonesus ("Thracian peninsula") waa a peninsula of Thrace, between 
 the Melian Gulf (now Gulf of Saros) and the Hel' lespont. The fertility of its soil early attracted 
 the Grecians to its shores, which soon became crowded with flourishing and popular cities. 
 (JtfapNo. IK.) 
 
 3. Jimphis' so, the chief town of Locris, was about seven miles west from Delphi, near the 
 head of the Crissean Gulf, now Gulf of SaUmn, a branch of the Corinthian Gulf. The modern 
 town of Salona represents the ancient Amphis' sa. (Map No. I.) 
 
 4. Klateia, a city in the north-east of Phocis, on the loft bank of the Cephis' sua, was about 
 twenty-five miles north-east from Delphi. Its ruins are to be seen >n a site called Klepkta. 
 (Map No. I.)
 
 CRAP. IV J GRECIAN HISTORY. 97 
 
 been intrusted by the Amphictyon' ic council, was his only object , 
 and he had a plausible excuse for entering Boeotia when the The- 
 bans and Athenians appeared as the allies of a city devoted by the 
 gods to destruction. At Chacronea 1 the hostile armies met, nearly 
 equal in number; but there was no Per' icles, nor Epaminon' das, to 
 match the warlike abilities of Philip and the young prince Alex- 
 ander, the latter of whom commanded a wing of the Macedonian 
 army. The day was decided against the Grecians, although their 
 los>s in battle was not large ; but the event broke up the feeble con- 
 federacy against Philip, and left each of the allied States at his 
 mercy. 
 
 10. While Philip treated the TheBans with some severity, and 
 obliged them to ransom their prisoners, and resign a portion of 
 their territory, he exercised a degree of lenity towards the Athen- 
 ians which excited general surprise offering them terms of peace 
 which they themselves would scarcely have ventured to propose to 
 him. He next assembled a congress of all the Grecian States, at 
 Corinth, for the purpose of settling the affairs of Greece. Here all 
 his proposals were adopted, war was declared against Persia, and 
 Philip was appointed commander-in-chief of the Grecian forces ; but 
 while he was making preparations for his great enterprise he was 
 assassinated on a public occasion by a Macedonian nobleman, in re- 
 venge for some private wrong. 
 
 1 1 . Alexander, the son of Philip, then at the age of twenty years, 
 succeeded his father on the throne of Mac' edon. At once the Illyr'- 
 
 ians, Thracians. and other northern tribes that had been 
 
 i -i- n - ALEX AN- 
 
 made tributary by Philip, took up arms to recover their DEE THE 
 
 independence; but Alexander quelled the spirit of re- GREAT. 
 volt in a single campaign. During his absence on this expedition, the 
 Grecian States, headed by the Thebans and Athenians, made prepara 
 tions to shake off the yoke of Mac' edon ; but Alexander, whose marches 
 were unparalleled for their rapidity, suddenly appeared in their midst. 
 Thebes, the first object of his vengeance, was taken by assault, in 
 which six thousand of her warriors were slain. Ever distinguished 
 by her merciless. treatment of her conquered enemies, she was now 
 
 1. The plain of Cftarronea, on which the battle was fcught, is on the southern bank of fh 
 Cephis' sus river, in Breotia, a few miles from its entrance into the Copaic lake. In the year 
 447 B. 0. the Athenians had been defeated on the same spot by the Beeotians ; and in the 
 year 86 B. C. the same place witnessed a bloody engagement between the Romans, under 
 Sylla, and the troops of Mithridates. (Map No. I.) 
 
 E
 
 98 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART I. 
 
 doomed to suffer the extreme penalties of war which she had often 
 inflicted on others. Most of the city was levelled with the ground, 
 and thirty thousand prisoners, besides women and children, were con- 
 demned to slavery. 
 
 12. The other Grecian States which had provoked the resentment 
 of Alexander, hastily renewed their submission ; and Athens, with 
 servile homage, sent an embassy to congratulate the youthful hero on 
 his recent successes. Alexander accepted the excuses of all, renewed 
 the confederacy which his father had formed, and having intrusted 
 the government of Greece and Mac'cdon to Antip'ater, one of his 
 generals, set out on his career of eastern conquest, at the head of an 
 army of only thirty-five thousand men, and taking with him a treasury 
 of only seventy talents of silver. He had even distributed nearly all 
 the remaining property of his crown among his friends ; and when he 
 was asked by Perdic' cas what he had reserved for himself, he an- 
 swered, " MY HOPES." 
 
 13. Early in the spring of the year 334, Alexander crossed the 
 Hel' lespont, and a few days later defeated an immense Persian army 
 on the eastern bank of the Gran' icus, 1 with the loss on his part of 
 only eighty-five horsemen and thirty light infantry. Proceeding 
 thence south towards the coast, the gates of Sardis and Eph' esus 
 were thrown open to him ; and although at Miletus and Halicar- 
 nas' sus 3 he met with some resistance, yet before the close of the 
 first campaign he was undisputed master of all Asia Minor. 
 
 14. Early in the following spring (B. C. 333), he directed his 
 march farther eastward, through Cappadocia 3 and Cilic' ia, 4 and on 
 the coast of the latter, near the small town of Is' sus, 6 again met 
 
 t. The Gran' icus, the same as the Turkish Dcmotiko, is a a small stream of Mys' ia, in Asia 
 Minor, which flows from Mount I' da, east of Troy, northward into the Propon' tis, or Sea of 
 Marmora. (Map No. IV.) 
 
 2. Halicarnas' sus, the principal city of Caria, was situated on the northern shore of the 
 Cor' amic Gulf, now Gulf of Kos, one hundred miles south from Smyrna. Halicarnas' sus was 
 the birth-place of Herod' otus the historian, of Dionys' ius the historian and critic, and of Hera- 
 clitus the poet. It was Artemis' ia, queen of Caria, who erected the splendid mausoleum, or 
 tomb, to her husband, Mausulus. The Turkish town of Boodroom is on the site of the ancient 
 Halicarnas' sus. Near the modern town are to be seen old walls, exquisite sculptures, frag- 
 ments of columns, and the remains of a theatre two hundred and eighty feet in diameter, 
 which seems to have had thirty-six rows of marble seats. (Map No. IV.) 
 
 3. Cappadocia was. an interior province of Asia Minor, south-east of Galatia. ( Map No. IV.) 
 
 4. Cilic' ia was south of Cappadocia, on the coast of the Mediterranean. (Map No. IV.) 
 
 5. Is' sus (now Aiasse, or Urzin) was a sea-port town of Cilic' ia, at the north-eastern ex- 
 tremity of the Mediterranean, and at the head of the Gulf of Is' sus. The plain between the 
 gfea and the mountains, where the battle was fought, was less than two miles in width, a suf- 
 floent space for the evolutions of the Mac' edonian phalanx, but not large enough for the maa- 
 oauvres of so great an army aa that of Darius. (Map No. IV.)
 
 CHAP. IV.] GRECIAN HISTORY. 99 
 
 the Persian army, numbering seven hundred thousand men, and 
 commanded by Darius himself, king of Persia. In the battle -which 
 followed, Alexander, as usual, led on his army in person, and fought 
 in the thickest of the fight. The result was a total rout of the Per- 
 sians, with a loss of more than a hundred thousand men, while that 
 of the Greeks and Macedonians was less than five hundred. The 
 Persian monarch fled in the beginning of the engagement, leaving 
 his mother, wife, daughters, and an infant son, to the mercy of the 
 victor, who treated them with the greatest kindness and respect. 
 When, afterwards, Darius heard, at the same time, of the generous 
 treatment of his wife, who was accounted the most beautiful woman 
 in Asia, of her death from sudden illness, and of the magnificent 
 burial which she had received from the conqueror, he lifted up his 
 hands to heaven and prayed, that if his kingdom were to pass from 
 himself, it might be transferred to Alexander. 
 
 15. The conqueror next directed his march southward through 
 northern Syria and Palestine. At Damascus a vast amount of 
 treasure belonging to the king of Persia fell into his hands : the 
 city of Tyre, after a vigorous siege of seven months, and a desperate 
 resistance, was taken by storm, and thirty thousand of the Tyrians 
 sold as slaves. (B. C. 332.) After the fall of Tyre, all the cities 
 of Palestine submitted, except Gaza, 1 which made as obstinate a de- 
 fence as Tyre, and was as severely punished. From Palestine Alex- 
 ander proceeded into Egypt, which was eager to throw off the Per- 
 sian tyranny, and he took especial care to conciliate the priests by 
 the honors which he paid to the Egyptian gods. After having 
 founded a new city, which he named Alexandria, 2 and crossed the 
 
 1. Gaza, an early Philistine city of great natural strength in the south-western part of Palestine, 
 was sixteen miles south of Ascalon, and but a short distance from the Mediterranean. The 
 place was called Constantia by the Romans, and is now called Rassa by the Arabs. (Map No. VI.) 
 
 2. Alexandria is about fourteen miles south-west from the Canopic, or most western branch 
 of the Nile, and is built partly on the ridge of land between the sea and the bed of the old 
 Lake Mareotis, and partly on the peninsula (formerly island) of Pharos, which projects into 
 the Mediterranean. Alexandria, the site of which was most admirably chosen by its founder, 
 la the only port on the Egyptian coast that has deep water, and that is accessible at all sea- 
 eons. Lake Mareotis, which for many ages after the Greek and Roman dominion in Egypt 
 was mostly dried up, and whose bed was lower than the surface of the Mediterranean, had no 
 outlet to the sea until the English, in the year 1801, opened a passage into it from the Bay 
 of Aboukir, when it soon resumed its ancient extent. The ancient canal from Alexandria to the 
 Nile, a distance of forty-eight miles, was reopened in 1819. While the commerce of the Indies 
 was carried on by way of the Red Sea and the Isthmus of Suez, Alexandria was a great com- 
 mercial emporium, but it rapidly declined after the discovery of the passage to India by way 
 of the Cape of Good Hope. It is probable that the commerce of the east, through the agency 
 of steam, will again flow, to a great extent, in the ancient channel, and that Alexandria will 
 again become a great commercial emporium. (Map No. V.)
 
 tOO ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART I 
 
 Libyan desert to consult the oracle of Jupiter Am' mon, he returned 
 to Palestine, when, learning that Darius was making vast prepara- 
 tions to oppose him, he crossed the Euphrates, and directed hii 
 march into the very heart of the Persian empire, declaring that " the 
 world could no more admit two masters than two suns." 
 
 16. On a beautiful plain twenty miles distant from the town of 
 Arbela, 1 whence the battle derives its name, the Persian monarch, 
 surrounded by all the pomp and luxury of Eastern magnificence, had 
 collected the remaining strength of his empire, consisting of an 
 army, as stated by some authors, of more than a million of foot 
 soldiers, and forty thousand cavalry, besides two hundred scythed 
 chariots, and fifteen elephants brought from the west of India. 8 To 
 oppose this force Alexander had only forty thousand foot soldiers, 
 and seven thousand cavalry, but they were well armed and discip- 
 lined, confident of victory, and led by an able general who had never 
 experienced a defeat, and who directed the operations of the battle 
 in person. (B. C. 331.) 
 
 i 7. Darius sustained the conflict with better judgment and more 
 courage than at Is' sus, but the cool intrepidity of the Macedonian 
 phalanx was irresistible, and the field of battle soon became a scene 
 of slaughter, in which, some say, forty thousand, and others, three 
 hundred thousand of the barbarians were slain, while the loss of 
 Alexander did not exceed five hundred men. Although Darius es- 
 caped with a portion of his body-guard, yet the result of the battle 
 decided the contest, and gave to Alexander the dominion of the Per- 
 sian empire. Not long after, Darius himself was slain by one of 
 his own officers. 
 
 18. Soon after the battle of Arbela, Alexander proceeded to 
 Babylon, and during four years remained in the heart of Persia, re 
 ducing to subjection the chiefs who still struggled for independence, 
 and regulating the government of the conquered provinces. Am- 
 bitious of farther conquests, he passed the Indus, and invaded the 
 country of the Indian king Porus, whom he defeated in a sanguinary 
 engagement, and took prisoner. When brought into the presence 
 of Alexander, and asked how he would be treated, he replied, " Like 
 a king ;" and so pleased was the conqueror with the lofty demeanor 
 
 1. ArlHa. was about forty miles east of the Tigris, and twenty miles south-east from the 
 plain of Gaugamiila, where the battle was fought. Gaugam61a, a small hamlet, was a short 
 distance south-cast from the site of Nineveh. 
 
 2. The term India was applied by the ancient geographers to all that part of Asia which is 
 wt of the river Indus. (Map No. V.)
 
 CHAP. IV.] GRECIAN HISTORY. 101 
 
 of the captive,, and with the valor which he had shown in battle, that 
 he not only re-instated him in his royal dignity, but conferred upon 
 him a large addition of territory. Alexander continued his march 
 eastward until he reached the Hyp hasis, 1 the most eastern tributary 
 of the Indus, when his troops, seeing no end of their toils, refused 
 to follow him farther, and he was reluctantly forced to abandon the 
 career of conquest which he had marked out for himself to the 
 eastern ocean. 
 
 19. Resolving to return into Central Asia by a new route, he de- 
 scended the Indus to the sea, whence, after sending a fleet with a 
 portion of his forces around through the Persian Gulf 2 to the Eu- 
 phrates, he marched with the rest of his army through the barren 
 wastes of Gedrosia, 3 and after much suffering and considerable loss, 
 arrived once more in the fertile provinces of Persia. For some time 
 after his return his attention was engrossed with plans for organizing, 
 on a permanent basis, the government of the mighty empire which 
 he had won. Aiming to unite the conquerors and the conquered, 
 so as to form out of both a nation independent alike of Macedonian 
 and of Persian prejudices, he married Statira, the oldest daughter of 
 Darius, and united his principal officers with Persian and Median 
 women of the noblest families, while ten thousand of his soldiers 
 were induced to follow the example of their superiors. 
 
 20. But while he was occupied with these cares, and with dreams 
 of future conquests, his career was suddenly terminated by death. 
 On setting out to visit Babylon, soon after the decease of an inti- 
 mate friend, which had caused a great depression of his spirits, he 
 was warned by the magicians that Babylon would be fatal to him ; 
 but he proceeded to the city, where, haunted by gloomy forebodings 
 and superstitious fancies, he endeavored to dispel hifl melancholy by 
 indulging more freely in the pleasures of the table. Excessive drink 
 ing at length brought to a crisis a fever, which he h0rt probably con 
 
 1. The Hyphasis, now called Beyah, or Beas, is the most eastern tributary of the Indui 
 The Sutledge, which enters the Beyah from the east, has been mistaken by seine writers for ti 
 ancient Hyphasis. (Map No. V.) 
 
 2. The Persian Gulf is an extensive arm of the Indian ocean, separating Southern Pers.4 
 from Arabia. During a long period it was the thoroughfare for the commerce Dotween tvj 
 western world and India. The navigation of the Gulf, especially along the A*-'iv> T3st, t 
 tedious and difficult, owing to its numerous islands and reefs. The Bahrci* islands, nea t*e 
 Arabian shore, are celebrated for their pearl fisheries, which yield pearls of the tiu 01 more 
 ihan a million dollars annually. (Map No. V.) 
 
 3. Gtdrisia, corresponding to the modern Persian province of Mekran, Is a sand* r i *. -i 
 region, extending along the shore of the Indian Ocean from the river Indus to th tnov rf 
 the Persian Gulf. (Map No. V.)
 
 102 ANCIENT HISTORY. 
 
 tracted in the marshes of Assyria, and which suddenly terminated his 
 life in the thirty-third year of his age, and the thirteenth of his 
 reign. (B. C. May, 324.) 
 
 21. The character of Alexander has afforded inatler for much discus- 
 sion, and is, to this day, a subject of dispute. At times he was 
 guilty of remorseless and unnecessary cruelty to the vanquished, and 
 in a fit of passion he slew the friend who had saved his life; but on 
 other occasions he was distinguished by an excess of lenity, and by 
 the most noble generosity and benevolence. His actions and char- 
 acter were indeed of a mixed nature, which is the reason that some 
 have regarded him as little more than a heroic madman, while others 
 give him the honor of vast and enlightened views of policy, which 
 aimed at founding, among nations hitherto barbarous, a solid and 
 flourishing empire. 
 
 22. If we are to judge by his actions, however, rather than by his 
 supposed moral motives, he was, in reality, one of the greatest of 
 men ; great, not only in the vast compass and persevering ardor of 
 his ambition, which " wept for more worlds to conquer," but great in 
 the objects and aims which ennobled it, and great because his adven- 
 turous spirit and personal daring never led him into deeds of rash- 
 ness ; for his boldest military undertakings were ever guided by 
 sagacity and prudence. The conquests of Alexander were highly 
 beneficial in their results to the conquered people ; for his was the 
 first of the great monarchies founded in Asia that contained any ele- 
 ment of moral and intellectual progress that opened a prospect of 
 advancing improvement, and not of continual degradation, to its 
 subjects. To the commercial world it opened new countries, and 
 new channels of trade, and gave a salutary stimulus to industry and 
 mercantile activity : nor were these benefits lost when the empire 
 founded by Alexander broke in pieces in the hands of. his successors; 
 for the passages which he opened, by sea and by land, between the 
 Euphrates and the Indus, had become the highways of the commerce 
 of the Indies ; Babylon remained a famous port until its rival, Seleu'- 
 cia, 1 arose into eminence ; and Alexandria long continued to receive 
 and pour out an inexhaustible tide of wealth. 
 
 1. Seleu' cia, built by Seleu' cus, one of Alexander's generals, was situated on the western 
 bank of the Tigris, about forty-five miles north of Babylon. Seleu' cus designed it as a free 
 Grecian city; and many ages after the fall of the Macedonian empire, it retained the charac- 
 teristics of a Grecian colony, arts, military virtue, and the love of freedom. When at the 
 height of its prosperity it contained a population of six hundred thousand citizens, governed by 
 a senate of three hundred noble*.
 
 CHAP. IV.] GRECIAN HISTORY. 103 
 
 23. The suvlden death of Alexander left the government in a very 
 unsettled condition. As he had appointed no successor, several of his 
 generals contended for the throne, or for the regency during the 
 minority of his sons : and hence arose a series of intrigues, and 
 bloody wars, which, in the course of twenty-three years, caused the 
 destruction of the entire family of Alexander, and ended in the dis- 
 solution of the Macedonian empire. 
 
 24. When intelligence of the death of Alexander reached Greece, 
 the country was already on the eve of a revolution against Antip '- 
 ater ; and Demosthenes, still the foremost advocate of liberty, now 
 found little difficulty in uniting several of the States with Athens in 
 a confederacy against Macedonian supremacy. Sparta, however, was 
 too proud to act under her ancient rival, and Thebes no longer ex- 
 isted. Antip' ater attempted to secure the straits of Thermop' ylse 
 against the confederates, but he was met by Leos' thenes, the Athe- 
 nian general, and defeated. Eventually, however, Antip' ater, having 
 received strong reinforcements from Mac' edon, attacked the confeder 
 ates, and completely annihilated their army. Athens was compelled 
 to abolish her democratic form of government, to receive Macedonian 
 garrisons in her fortresses, and to surrender a number of her most 
 famous orators, including Demosthenes. The latter, to avoid falling 
 into the hands of Antip' ater, terminated his life by poison. 
 
 25. Antip' ater, at his death, left the government in the hands of 
 Polysper' chon, as regent during the minority of a son of Alexander ; 
 but Cassan' der, the son of Antip' ater, soon after usurped the sover- 
 eignty of Greece and Mac' edon, and, for the greater security of hig 
 power, caused all the surviving members of the family of Alexander 
 to be put to death. Antig' onus, another of Alexander's generals ; 
 had before this time overrun Syria and Asia Minor, and his am- 
 bitious views extended to the undivided sovereignty of all the coun- 
 tries which had been ruled by Alexander. Four of the most powerful 
 of the other generals, Ptol' emy, Seleu' cus, Lyshn' achus, and Cas- 
 san' der, formed a league against him, and fought with him the 
 famous battle of Ip' sus, 1 in Phryg' ia, a which ended in the defeat 
 and .death of Antig' onus, the destruction of the power which he had 
 raised, and the final dissolution of the Macedonian empire, three 
 hundred and one years before the Christian era. 
 
 L Ip' sus was a city of Phryg' ia, near the southern boundary of Galatia, but its exact lo- 
 cality is unknown. (Map No. IV.) 
 2. P/tryg' ia was the central province of western Asia Minor. (Maps Nos. IV. and V j
 
 104 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAI I 
 
 26. A new partition of the provinces was now made into four in- 
 dependent kingdoms. Ptol'emy was confirmed in the possession of 
 Egypt, together with Lib' ya, and part of the neighboring territories 
 of Arabia ; Seleu' cus received the countries embraced in the east- 
 ern conquests of Alexander, and the whole region between the coast 
 of Syria and the Euphrates ; but the whole of this vast empire soon 
 dwindled into the Syrian monarchy : Lysim' achus received the 
 northern and western portions of Asia Minor, as an appendage to hia 
 kingdom of Thrace ; while Cassan' der received the sovereignty of 
 Greece and Mac' edon. Of these kingdoms, the most powerful were 
 Syria and Egypt ; the former of which continued under the dynasty 
 of the Seleu' cidse, and the latter under that of the Ptol' eniies, until 
 both were absorbed in the growing dominion of the Roman empire. 
 Of the kingdom of Thrace under Lysim' achus, we shall have occa- 
 sion to speak in its farther connection with Grecian history. 
 
 27. Cassan' der survived the establishment of his power only four 
 years. After his death his two sons quarrelled for the succession, 
 and called in the aid of foreigners to enforce their claims. Deme- 
 trius, son of Antig' onus, having seized the opportunity of inter- 
 ference in their disputes, cut off the brother who had invited his aid, 
 and made himself master of the throne of Mac' edon, which was en- 
 joyed by his posterity, except during a brief interruption after his 
 death, down to the time of the Roman conquest. Demetrius possessed 
 in addition' to Mac' edon, Thes' saly, At' tica, and Boeotia, together 
 with a great portion of the Peloponnesus; but his government was 
 that of a pure military despotism, which depended on the army for 
 support, wholly independent of the good will of the people. Aim- 
 ing to recover his father's power in Asia, he excited the jealousy of 
 Seleu' cus, king of Syria, who was able to induce Lysim' achus, of 
 Thrace, and Pyr' rhus, king of Epirus, to commence a war against 
 him. The latter twice overran, Macedonia, and even seized the 
 throne, which he held during a few months, while Demetrius was 
 driven from the kingdom by his own rebellious subjects ; but his son 
 Antig' onus maintained himself in Peloponnesus, waiting a favorable 
 opportunity of placing himself on the throne of his father. 
 
 28. During a number of years Mac' edon, Greece, and "Western 
 Asia, were harassed with the wars excited by the various aspirants 
 to power. Lysim' achus was defeated and slain in a war with Se- 
 leu' cus ; and the latter, invading Thrace, was assassinated by 
 Ptol' emy Cerau' nus, who then usurped the government of Thra e
 
 CHAP. IV.] GRECIAN HISTORY. 10 
 
 and Mac' cdon. In this situation of affairs, a storm, unseen in the 
 distance, but which had long been gathering, suddenly burst upon 
 Mac' edon, threatening to convert, by its ravages, the whole Grecian 
 peninsula into a scene of desolation. 
 
 29. A vast horde of barbarians of the Celtic race had for some 
 time been accumulating around the head waters of the Adriat'ic,' 
 making Panuonia 2 the chief seat of their power. Influenced by 
 hopes of plunder, rather than of conquest, they suddenly appeared 
 on the frontiers of Mac' edon, and sent an embassy to Cerau' nus, 
 offering peace if he were willing to purchase it by tribute. A 
 haughty defiance from the Macedonian served only to quicken the 
 march of the invaders, who defeated and killed Cerau' nus in a great 
 battle, and so completely routed his army that almost all were slain 
 or taken. (B. C. 280.) The conquerors then overran all Mac' edon 
 to the borders of Thes' saly, and a detachment made a devastating 
 inroad into the rich vale of the Peneus. The walled towns alone, 
 which the barbarians had neither the skill nor the patience to reduce 
 by siege, held out until the storm had spent its fury, when the Celts, 
 scattered over the country in plundering parties, having met with 
 some reverses, gradually withdrew from a country where there was 
 little left to tempt their cupidity. 
 
 30. In the following year (279 B. C.) another band of Celts, esti- 
 mated at two hundred thousand men, under the guidance of their 
 principal Brenn or chief, called Bren' nus, overran Macedonia with 
 little resistance, and passing through Thessaly, threatened to extend 
 their ravages over southern Greece ; but the allied Grecians, under 
 the Athenian general, Cal' lipus, met them at Thermop' ylae, and at 
 first repulsed them with considerable loss. Eventually, however, 
 the secret path over the mountains was betrayed to the Celts as it 
 had been to the Persian army of Xerxes, and the Grecians were 
 forced to retreat. A part of the barbarian army, under Bren' nus, 
 then marched into Phocis, for the purpose of plundering Delphi; 
 but their atrocities roused against them the whole population, and 
 they found their entire march, over roads mountainous and difficult, 
 
 1. The Jidriat' ic or Hadriatic (now most generally called the Oulf of Venice) is that large 
 arm of the Meditenanean sea which lies between Italy and the opposite shores ol Illyr' ia, 
 Epirus, and Greece. The southern portion of the gulf is now, as anciently, called the Ionian 
 tea. The Adriat' ic derived its name from the once flourishing sea-port town of A' dria north 
 of the river Po. The harbor of A' dria has long been filled up by the mud and other deposits 
 brought down by the rivers, and the town is now nineteen miles inland. (Map No. VIIL) 
 
 2. Pannonia, afterwards a Roman province, was north of Illyr' ia, haTing the Danube foi iU 
 Dorthorn and eastern boundary. (.Map No. VIII &. IX.)
 
 106 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAET L 
 
 beset \VK!I enemies burning for revenge. The invaders also suffered 
 greatly from the cold and storms in the defiles of the mountains. It 
 was said that the gods fought for the sacred temple, and that an 
 earthquake rent the rocks, and brought down huge masses on the 
 heads of the assailants. Certain it is that the invaders, probably 
 acted upon by superstitious terror, were repulsed and disheartened. 
 Bren' nus, who had been wounded before Delphi, is said to have killed 
 himself in despair ; and only a remnant of the barbarians regained 
 their original seats on the Adriat' ic. 
 
 31. After the repulse of the Celts, Antig'onus, the son of Deme- 
 trius, was able to gain possession of the throne of Mac' edon, but he 
 found a formidable competitor in Pyr' rhus, king of Epirus, who re- 
 solved to add Mac' edon, and, if possible, the whole of Greece to his 
 own dominion. Pyr' rhus had no sooner returned from his famous 
 expedition into Italy, of which we shall have occasion to speak in 
 Roman history , a than he seized a pretext for declaring war against 
 Antig' onus, and invaded Macedonia with his small army, (274 B. C.) 
 the remnant of the forces which he had led against Rome, but which 
 he now strengthened with a body of Celtic mercenaries. When 
 Antig' onus marched against him, many of his troops, who had little 
 affection or respect for their king, went over to Pyr' rhus, whose 
 celebrated military prowess had won their admiration. 
 
 32. Antig' onus then retired into Southern Greece, whither he 
 was followed by Pyr' rhus, who professed that the object of his expe- 
 dition was merely to restore the freedom of the cities which were held 
 in subjection by his rival ; but when he reached the borders of 
 Laconia he laid aside the mask, and began to ravage the country, 
 and made an unsuccessful attempt to surprise Sparta, which was lit- 
 tle prepared for defence. He then marched to Ar' gos, whither he 
 had been invited by one of the rival leaders of the people, but he 
 found Antig' onus, at the head of a strong force, encamped on one 
 of the neighboring heights. Pyr' rhus gained entrance into the city 
 by night, through treachery, but at the same time the troops of Antig'- 
 onus were admitted from an opposite quarter the citizens arose in 
 arms, and a fierce struggle was carried on in the streets until day- 
 light, when Pyr' rhus himself was slain (272 B. C.) by the hand of an 
 Ar'give woman, who, exasperated at seeing him about to kill her son, 
 hurled upon him a ponderous tile from the house-top. The greater 
 part of the army of Pyr' rhus, chiefly composed of Macedonians, 
 
 a. Sac page 149.
 
 CHAP. IV.] GRECIAN HISTORY. 107 
 
 then went over to their former sovereign, who soon after gained the 
 throne of Mac' edon, which he held until his death. 
 
 33. The death of Pyr' rhus forms an important epoch in Grecian 
 history, as it put an end to the struggle for power among Alexander's 
 successors in the West, and left the field clear for the final contest 
 between the liberty of Greece and the power of Mac' edon, which 
 was only terminated by the ruin of both. When Antig'onus re- 
 turned to Mac' edon, its acknowledged sovereign, he cherished the 
 hope of ultimately reducing all Greece to his sway, little dreaming 
 that the power centered in a recent league of a few Achae' an cities 
 was destined to become a formidable adversary to his house. 
 
 34. The Achce' an League comprised at first twelve towns of 
 Achaia, which were associated together for mutual safety, forming a 
 little federal republic all the towns having an equality IIL ACH^E'AN 
 of representation in the general government, to which LEAGUE; 
 all matters affecting the common welfare were intrusted, each town 
 at the same time retaining the regulation of its own domestic policy. 
 The Achae' an league did not become of sufficient political importance 
 to- attract the attention of Antig' onus until about twenty years after 
 the death of Pyr' rhus, when Aratus, an exile from Sic' yon, at the 
 head of a small band of followers, surprised the city by night, and 
 without any bloodshed delivered it from the dominion of the tyrants 
 who, under Macedonian protection, had long oppressed it with 
 despotic sway. (251 B. C.) Fearful of the hostility of Antig'onus, 
 Aratus induced Sic' yon to join the Achae' an league, and although 
 its power greatly exceeded that of any Achse' an town, it claimed no 
 superiority of privilege over the other members of the confederacy, 
 but obtained only one vote in the general council of the league , a 
 precedent which was afterwards strictly adhered to in the admission 
 of other cities. Aratus received the most distinguished honors from 
 the Achae' ans, and, a few years after the accession of Sic' yon, was 
 placed at the head of the armies of the confederacy. (B. C. 246.) 
 
 35. Corinth, the key to Greece, having been seized by a stratagem 
 of Antig' onus, and its citadel occupied by a Macedonian garrison, 
 was rescued by a bold enterprise of Aratus, and induced to join the 
 league. (243 B. G.) Other cities successively gave in their adhe- 
 rence, until the confederacy embraced nearly the whole of Pelopon- 
 nesus. Although Athens did not unite with it, yet Aratus obtained 
 the withdrawal of its Macedonian garrison. Sparta opposed the 
 league induced Ar'gos and Corinth to withdraw from it and by
 
 108 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART I. 
 
 her successes over the Achae' ans, eventually induced them to call in 
 the aid of the Macedonians, their former enemies. 
 
 36. Antig'onus II., readily embracing the opportunity of restor 
 ing the influence of his family in Southern Greece, marched against 
 the Lacedaemonians, over whom he obtained a decisive victory, 
 which placed Sparta at his mercy. But he used his victory moder- 
 ately, and granted the Spartans peace on liberal terms. On his 
 death, which occurred soon after, he was succeeded on the throne 
 of Mac' edon by his nephew and adopted son, Philip II., a youth of 
 only seventeen. 
 
 37. The JEtolians, 1 the rudest of the Grecian tribes, who had 
 acquired the character of a nation of freebooters and pirates, had 
 at this time formed a league similar to the Achse' an, and counting 
 on the inexperience of the youthful Philip, and the weakness of the 
 Achse' ans, began a series of unprovoked aggressions on the sur- 
 rounding States. The Messenians, whose territory they had invaded 
 by way of the western coast of the Peloponnesus, called upon the 
 Achae' ans for assistance, but Aratas, going to their relief, was attack- 
 ed unexpectedly, and defeated. Soon after, the youthful Philip was 
 placed at the head of the Achae' an League, when a general war be- 
 gan between thfe Macedonians, Achaa'ans, and their confederates, 
 on the one side, and the .ZEtolians, who were aided by the Spartans 
 and E' leans, on the other. 
 
 38. The war continued four years, and was conducted with great 
 cruelty and obstinacy on both sides ; but Philip and the Achae' ana 
 were on the whole successful, and the JEtolians and their allies be- 
 came desirous of peace, while new and ambitious views more eagerly 
 inclined Philip to put an end to the unprofitable contest. At this 
 time the Carthaginians and Romans were contending for ma&tery 
 in the second Punic war, and Philip began to view the struggle as 
 one in which an alliance with one of the parties would be desirable, 
 by opening to himself prospects of future conquest and glory. By 
 siding with the Carthaginians, who were the most distant party, and 
 from whom he would have less to fear than from the Romaju, he 
 hoped to be able eventually to insure to himself the sovereignty of 
 all Greece, and to make additions to Macedonia on the side of Italy. 
 He therefore proposed terms of peace to the ^Etolians ; and a treaty 
 
 1. JEtolia was a country of Northern Greece, bounded on the north by Thes' saly, on the 
 east by Doris, Phocis, and Lucris, on the south by the Corinthian Gulf, and on the west by 
 Acarnania. It was in general a rough and mountainous country, although some ( * the valley* 
 were remarkable for their fertility. (Map No. I.)
 
 CHAP. IV.] GRECIAN HISTORY. 109 
 
 was concluded at Naupac' tus, which left all the parties in the war in 
 the jnjoyment of their respectiva possessions. (217 B. C.) 
 
 39. After the great battle of Can'nas, a which seemed to have ex- 
 tinguished the last hopes of Rome, Philip sent envoys to Hannibal, 
 the Carthaginian general, and concluded with him a treaty of strict 
 alliance. He next sailed with a small fleet up the Adriat' ic, and 
 while besieging Appollonia, 1 a town in Illyr' ia, was met and defeated 
 by the Roman praetor, M. Valerius, who had been sent to succor 
 the Illyr' ians. (215 B. C.) Philip was forced to burn his ships, 
 and retreat over land to Macedonia, leaving his baggage, and the 
 arms of many of his troops, in the enemy's hands. Such was the 
 unfortunate issue of his first encounter with the Roman soldiery. 
 
 40. Soon after his return to Macedonia, finding Aratus in the 
 way of his projects against the liberties of Southern Greece, he 
 contrived to have the old general removed by slow poison ; a crime 
 which filled all Greece with horror and indignation. In the mean- 
 time, the Romans, while recovering ground in Italy, contrived to 
 keep Philip busy at home, by inciting the .ZEtolians to violate the 
 recent treaty, and inducing Sparta and E' lis to join in a war against 
 Mac' edon. Still Philip, supported for awhile by the Achae' ans, 
 under their renowned leader, Philopoe' men, maintained his ground, 
 until, first, the Athenians, no longer able to protect their fallen for- 
 tunes, solicited aid from the Romans ; and finally, the Achae' ans 
 themselves, being divided into factions, accepted terms of peace. 
 
 41. Philip continued to struggle against his increasing enemies, 
 until, being defeated in a great battle with the Romans, b he pur- 
 chased peace by the sacrifice* of the greater part of his navy, the 
 payment of a tribute, and the resignation of his supremacy over the 
 Grecian States. At the celebration of the Isth' mian games at 
 Corinth the terms of the Roman senate were made known to the 
 Grecians, who received, with the height of exultation, the proclama- 
 tion that the independence of Greece was restored, under the au- 
 spices of the Roman arms. (196 B. C.) 
 
 42. Probably nothing was farther from the intention of the Roman 
 senate than to allow the Grecian States to regain their ancient power 
 and sovereignty, and it was sufficient to damp the joy of the more 
 
 1. Jlpollimia. wag situated on the northern side of the river A6us (now Vojutza) near its 
 mouth. Its ruins still retain the name of Pollini. Apollonia was found(xl by a colony "rom 
 Corinth and Corcyra, and, according to Strabo, was renowned for the wisdom of its li ws. 
 
 a. See p. 158. b. Battle of Cynocephalae, 197 B. C. See p. 161.
 
 110 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART! 
 
 considerate that the boon of freedom which Rome affected to bestow 
 was tendered by a master who could resume it at his pleasure. At 
 the first opportunity of interference, therefore, which opened to the 
 Romans, the JEtolians, who had espoused the cause of Anti'ochus, 
 king of Syria, the enemy of Rome, were reduced to poverty and de- 
 prived of their independence. At a later period Per' seus, the suc- 
 cessor of Philip on the throne of Mac' edon, being driven into a war 
 by Roman ambition, finally lost his kingdom in the battle of Pyd' na/ 
 in which twenty thousand Macedonians were slain, and ten thousand 
 taken prisoners, while the Roman army, commanded by Lucius 
 ^Emil'ius Panlus, lost scarcely a hundred men. (168 B. C.) The 
 Macedonian monarchy was extinguished, and Per' seus himself, a 
 wanderer from his country, was taken prisoner in an island of the 
 M' gean, and conveyed to Rome to grace the triumph of the con- 
 queror. 
 
 43. Soon after the fall of Per' seus, the Achse' ans were charged 
 with having aided him in the war against Rome, and, without a 
 shadow of proof, one thousand of their worthiest citizens, among 
 whom was the historian Polyb' ius, were sent to Rome to prove their 
 innocence of this charge before a Roman tribunal. (167 B. C.) 
 Here they were detained seventeen years without being able to obtain 
 a hearing, when three hundred of the number, the only surviving 
 remnant of the thousand, were finally restored to their country. The 
 exiles returned, burning with vengeance against the Romans ; other 
 causes of animosity, arose ; and when a Roman embassy, sent to 
 Corinth, declared the will of the Roman senate that the Achae' an 
 League should be reduced to its original limits, a popular tumult 
 arose, and the Roman ambassadors were publicly insulted. 
 
 44. War soon followed. The Achte' ans and their allies were de- 
 feated by the consul Mum' mius near Corinth, and that city, then the 
 richest in Greece, after being plundered of its treasures, was con- 
 signed to the flames. The last blow to the liberties of the Hellenic 
 race had been struck, and all Greece, as far as Epirus and Macedo- 
 nia, now become a Roman province, under the name of Achaia. 
 (146 B. C.) " The end of the Achse' an war," says Thirwall, " was 
 the last stage of the lingering process by which Rome enclosed her 
 victim in the coils of her insidious diplomacy, covered it with the 
 
 1. Pyd' no. was a city near the south-eastern extremity of Macedonia, on the western shore of 
 the Thermaic Gulf, (n v Gulf of Saloniki.) The ancient Pydna is now called Kidros. Di 
 Clarke observed here a vast mound of earth, which he considered, with much probability, a* 
 marking the ite of the great battle fought there by the Romans and Macedonians. (Map No. I.,
 
 CHAP. VI.] JEWISH HISTORY. 1 1 1 
 
 slime of her sycophants and hirelings, crushed it when it began to 
 struggle, and then calmly preyed upon its vitals." 
 
 45. Wi have now arrived at the proper termination of Grecian 
 history. Niebuhr has remarked, that, " as rivers flow into the sea, 
 so does the history of all the nations, known to have existed pre- 
 viously in the regions around the Mediterranean, terminate in that 
 of Rome." Henceforward, then, the history of Greece becomes in 
 volved in the changing fortunes of the Roman empire, to whose early 
 annals we shall now return, after a brief notice of the cotemporary 
 history of surrounding nations. With the loss of her liberties the 
 glory of Greece had passed away. Her population had been gradu- 
 ally diminishing since the period of the Persian wars ; and from the 
 epoch of the Roman conquest the spirit of the nation sunk into do 
 spondency, and the energies of the people gradually wasted, until, no 
 later than the days of Strabo, 1 Greece existed only in the remembrance 
 of the past. Then, many of her cities were desolate, or had sunk to 
 insignificant villages, while Athens alone maintained her renown for 
 philosophy and the arts, and became the instructor of her conquer- 
 ors ; large tracts of land, once devoted to tillage, were either barren, 
 or had been converted into pastures for sheep, and vast herds of 
 cattle ; while the rapacity of Roman governors had inflicted upon 
 the sparse population impoverishment and ruin. 
 
 COTEMPORARY HISTORY: 490 TO 146 B. C. 
 
 1. Of the cotemporary annals of other nations during the authentic 
 period of Grecian history, there is little of importance to be nar- 
 rated beyond what will be found connected with Roman affairs in a 
 subsequent chapter ; although the Grecian cities of Italy, Sicily, and 
 Cyrenaica, considered not as dependent colonies of the parent State, but 
 as separate powers, will require some further notice. Of the history 
 of the Modes and Persians we have already given the most interesting 
 portion. Of Egyptian history little is known, beyond what has been 
 narrated, until the beginning of the dynasty of the Ptol' emies (30 1 
 B. C.,) and of the events from that period down to the time of Ro- 
 man interference in the affairs of Egypt, we have room for only occa- 
 sional notices, as connected with the more important L HISTORY 
 histories of other nations. Of the civil annals of the OF TH JEWS - 
 Jews we shall give a brief sketch, so as to continue, from a preced- 
 
 1. atrabo was a celebrated geographer, born at Amasia in Pontua, about the year 54 B. C.
 
 112 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART! 
 
 ing chapter,*the history of Judea down to the time when that country 
 became a province of the Roman empire. 
 
 2. It has been stated that the rebuilding of the second temple of 
 Jerusalem was completed during the reign of Darius Hystas'pes, 
 about twenty-five years before the commencement of the war between 
 the Greeks and Persians. During the following reign of Xerxes, the 
 Jews appear to have been treated by their masters with respect, and 
 also during the early part of the reign of Artaxerx' es Longimanus, 
 who had taken for his second wife a Jewish damsel named Esther, 
 the niece of the Jew Mor' decai, one of the officers of the palace. 
 The story of Haman, the wicked minister of the king, is doubtless 
 familiar to all our readers. After the Jews had been delivered from 
 the wanton malice of Haman, Nehemiah, also an officer in the king's 
 palace, obtained for them permission to rebuild the walls of the holy 
 city, and was appointed governor over Judea. With the close of 
 the administration of Nehemiah the annals embraced in the Old 
 Testament end, and what farther reliable information we possess of 
 the history of the Jews down to the time of the Roman conquest is 
 mostly derived from Josephus. 
 
 3. After Nehemiah, Judea was joined to the satrapy of Syria, a*- 
 though the internal government was still administered by the high- 
 priests, under the general superintendence of Persian officers the 
 people remaining quiet under the Persian government. After the 
 division of the vast empire of Alexander among his generals, Judea, 
 lying between Syria and Egypt, and being coveted by the monarchs 
 of both, suffered greatly from the wars which they carried on against 
 each other. At one time the Egyptian monarch, Ptol' emy Soter, 
 having invaded the country, stormed Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, 
 when the Jews, from superstitious motives, would not defend their 
 city, and transported a hundred thousand of the population to 
 Egypt, apparently, however, as eolonists, rather than as prisoners. 
 
 4. During the reigns of Ptol' emy Soter, Ptol' emy Philadel' phus, 
 Ptol' emy Euer' getes, and Ptol' emy Philop' ater, Judea remained 
 subject to Egypt, but was lost by Ptol' emy Epiph' anes. Ptol' emy' 
 Philadel' phus, by his generous treatment of the Jews, induced large 
 numbers of them to settle in Egypt. He was an eminent patron of 
 learning, and caused the septuagint translation of the scriptures to be 
 made, and a copy to be deposited in the famous library which he es- 
 tablished at Alexandria. On the accession of Ptol' emy Epiph' anes 
 to the throne, (204 B. C.) at the age of only five years, ALtiochus
 
 CHAP. IV.] JEWISH HISTORY. 113 
 
 the Great, king of Syria, easily persuaded the Jew.-! to place them- 
 selves under liis rule, and in return for their confidence in him he 
 conferred such favors upon Jerusalem as he knew were best calculated 
 to win the hearts of the people. 
 
 5. Antioolms Epiph' anes, the successor of Antiochus the Great, 
 having invaded Egypt, a false rumor of his death was brought to 
 Jerusalem, whereupon a civil war broke out between two factions of 
 the Jews who had long been quarrelling about the office of the higli 
 prrestliood. The tumult was quelled by the return of Antiochus, 
 who, exasperated on learning that the Jews had made public rejoic- 
 ings at his supposed death, marched against Jerusalem, which he 
 plundered, as if he had taken it by storm from an enemy. (169 B. C.) 
 He even despoiled the temple of its holy vessels, and carried off the 
 treasures of the nation collected there. Two years later he attempted 
 to carry out the plan of reducing the various religious systems of his 
 empire to one single profession, that of the Grecian polytheism. He 
 polluted the altar of the temple put a stop to the daily sacrifice 
 to the great festivals to the rite of circumcision burned the copies 
 of the law and commanded that the temple itself should be convert- 
 ed into an edifice sacred to the Olympian Jupiter. 
 
 6. These acts, and the insolent cruelties with which they were ac- 
 companied, met with a fierce and desperate resistance from the brave 
 family of the Mac' cabees, a or Asmoneans, who, under their heroic 
 leader Judas, first fled to the wilderness, and the caves of the nioun- 
 tians, where they were joined by numerous bands of their exasperated 
 countrymen, who, ere long, began to look upon Judas as an instru- 
 ment appointed by heaven for their deliverance. Thoroughly ac- 
 quainted with every impregnable cliff and defile of his mountain- 
 land, Judas was successful in every encounter in which he chose to 
 engage with the Syrians : by rapid assaults he made himself master 
 of many fortified place's, and within three years after the pollution 
 of the temple he had driven out of Judea four generals at the head 
 of large and regular armies. He then went up to Jerusalem, and 
 although a fortress in the lower city was still held by a Syrian garri- 
 son, he restored the walls and doors of the temple, caused the daily 
 sacrifice to be renewed, arid proclaimed a solemn festival of eight days 
 on the joyful occasion. 
 
 a. The appellation of Mac' cabecs was given them from the initial letters of tne text displayed 
 on their standard, which was, Mi Chamoka Baalim, Jahoh ! "Who is like untothee arc onif 
 the gods, O Lord !" from Exod. xv. 11. 
 
 S
 
 114 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART L 
 
 7 The war with Syria continued during the brief reign of the 
 youchful son of Antiochus Epiph' anes, and was extended into the 
 subsequent xeign of Demetrius Soter, (B. C. 162,) who sent two 
 powerful armies into Judea, the first of which was defeated in the 
 defile of Bethoron, 1 and its general slain. Another army was more 
 successful, and Judas himself fell, after having destroyed a multi- 
 tude of his enemies ; but his body was recovered, and he was buried 
 in the tomb of his fathers. " And all Israel mourned him with a 
 great mourning, and .sorrowed many days, and said, How is the 
 mighty fallen that saved Israel." 
 
 8. After the death of Judas a time of great tribulation followed; 
 the Syrians became masters of the country, and Jonathan, the brother 
 of Judas, the new leader of the patriotic band, was obliged to retire 
 to the mountains, where he maintained himself two years, while the 
 cities were occupied by Syrian garrisons. Eventually, during the 
 changing revolutions in the Syrian empire itself, Jonathan was en- 
 abled to establish himself in the priesthood, and under his adminis- 
 tration Judea again became a flourishing State. Being at length 
 treacherously murdered by one of the Syrian kings, (B. C. 143,) his 
 brother Simon succeeded to the priesthood, and during the seven 
 years in which he judged Israel, general prosperity prevailed through- 
 out the land. " The husbandmen tilled the field in peace, and the 
 earth gave forth her crops, and the trees of the plain their fruits. 
 The old men sat in the streets ; all talked together of their blessings, 
 and the young men put on the glory and the harness of war." 
 
 9. The remaining history of the Jews, from the time of Simon 
 down to the formation of Judea into a Roman province, is mostly 
 occupied with domestic commotions, whose details would possess 
 little interest for the general reader. The circumstances which 
 placed Judea under the sway of the Romans will be found detailed 
 in their connection with" Roman history. 
 
 1 0. Before the beginning of the " authentic period" of Grecian 
 history, various circumstances, such as the desire of adventure, corn- 
 
 ii. GRECIAN niercial interests, and, not unfrequeiitly, civil dissensions 
 
 COLONIES. a t home, led to the planting of Grecian colonies on many 
 
 distant oasts of the Mediterranean. Those of Thrace, Mac' edon, 
 
 anl Asia- Minor, were ever intimately connected with Greece proper, 
 
 in whose general history theirs is embraced ; but the Greek cities 
 
 1. Bethoron was a village about ten miles north-west from Jerusalem.
 
 CHAP. IV] GRECIAN COLONIES. 115 
 
 of Italy, Sicil} , and Cyrenaica, were too far removed from the drama 
 that was enacting around the shores of the JE' gean to be more than 
 occasionally and temporarily affected by the changing fortunes of the 
 parent States. Nevertheless, a brief notice of those distant settle- 
 ments that eventually rivalled even Athens and Sparta in power and 
 resources, cannot be uninteresting, and it will serve to give the reader 
 more accurate views, than he would otherwise possess, of the extent, 
 and importance of the field of Grecian history. 
 
 11. At an early period the shores of southern Italy and Sicily 
 were peopled by Greeks ; and so numerous and powerful did the 
 Grecian cities in those countries become, that the whole were comprised 
 by Strabo and others under the appellation Magna nr _ MAGNA 
 Grcecia or " Great Greece" an appropriate name for a GR^CIA. 
 region containing many cities far superior in size and population to 
 any in Greece itself. The earliest of these distant Grecian settle- 
 ments appear to have been made at Cumae, 1 and Neap' olis," on the 
 western coast of Italy, about the middle of the eleventh century 
 Nax' os, 3 on the eastern coast of Sicily, was founded about the year 
 735 B. C. ; and in the following year some Corinthians laid the 
 foundation of Syracuse. Gela, 4 on the western coast of the island, 
 and Messana 6 on the strait between Italy and Sicily, were founded 
 
 1. Ciim<E, a city of Campania, on the western coast of Italy, a short distance north-west from 
 Neapolis, and about a hundred and ten miles south-east from Rome, is supposed to have been 
 founded by a Grecian colony from Euboe' a about the year 1050 B. C. Cumae was built on a 
 rocky hill washed by the sea ; and the same name is still applied to the ruins that lie scattered 
 around its base. Some of the most splendid fictions of Virgil relate to the Cumaean Sibyl, 
 whose cave, hewn out of solid rock, actually existed on the top of the hill of Cumae. (Map 
 No. VIII.) 
 
 2. Neap' olis, (a Greek word meaning the new city,) now called Naples, was founded by a 
 colony from Cumae. It is situated on the north side of the Bay of Naples, in the immediate 
 vicinity of Mount Vesuvius, one hundred and eighteen miles south-east from Rome. (Map 
 No. VIII.) 
 
 3. Nax' os was north-east from Mount ^Etna, and about equi-distant from Messana and 
 Cat' ana. Nax' os was twice destroyed ; first by Dionysius the Elder, and afterwards by the 
 Siculi ; after which Tauromenium was built on its site. The modern Taormina occupies th 
 site of the ancient city. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 4. Gela was on the southern coast of Sicily, a short distance from the sea, on a river of the 
 same name, and about sixty miles west from Syracuse. On the site of the ancient city stands 
 the modern Terra Nova. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 5. Messdna, still a city of considerable extent under the name of Messina, was situated at 
 the north-eastern extremity of the island of Sicily, on the Urait of its own name. It was re- 
 garded by the Greeks as the key of the island, but the circumstance of its commanding position 
 always made it a tempting prize to the ambitious and powerful neighboring princes. It under- 
 went a great variety of changes, under the power of the Syracusans, Carthaginians, and Ro- 
 mans. It was treacherously seized by the Mamertini, (see p. 152) who slew the males, and toot 
 the wives and children as their property, and called the city Mamertina. Finally, a portion of 
 the inhabitants called in the aid of the Romans, and thu? began the first Punic war. C265 B. C.)
 
 116 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PARI I. 
 
 soon after. Agrigen' turn, 1 on the south-western coast, was founded 
 about a century later. 
 
 12. In the meantime the Greek cities Syb' aris, Crotona, 3 and 
 Taren' turn. 4 had been planted, and had rapidly grown to power and 
 opulence, on the south-eastern coast of Italy. The territorial do- 
 minions of Syb' aris and Crotona extended across the peninsula from 
 sea to sea. The former possessed twenty-five dependent towns, and 
 ruled over four distinct tribes or nations. The territories of Crotona 
 were still more extensive. These two Grecian States were at the 
 maximum of their power about the year 560 B. C. the time of the 
 accession of Pisis' tratus at Athens ; but they quarrelled with each 
 other, and the result of the fatal contest was the ruin of Syb' aris, 
 510 B. C. At the time of the invasion of Italy by Pyr'rhus, (see 
 p. 149.) Crotona was still a considerable city, extending on both sides 
 of the JEsarus, and its walls embracing a circumference of twelve 
 miles. Taren' turn was formed by a colony from Sparta about the 
 year 707. soon after the first Messenian war. No details of its his- 
 tory during the first two hundred and thirty years of its existence 
 
 "The modern city has a most imposing appearance from the sea, forming a fine circular 
 sweep about two miles in length on the west shore of its magnificent harbor, from which it 
 rises in the form of an amphitheatre; and being built of white stone, it strikingly coutnir-n 
 with the dark fronts that cover the forests in the background." ( Map No. VIII.) 
 
 1. .tlgrigcri turn was situated near the southern shore of Sicily, about midway of the island. 
 Next to Syracuse it was not only one of the largest and most famous cities of Sicily, but of the 
 ancient world ; and its ruins are still imposingly grand and magnificent. The modern town 
 of Girgcnti lies adjacent to the ruins, from which it is separated by the small river Arcagas. 
 (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 2. Syb' aris was a city of south-eastern Italy on the Tarentine Gulf. Crotona was about 
 seventy miles south of it. Pythogoras resided at Crotona during the latter years of his life ; 
 and Milo, the most celebrated athlete of antiquity, was a native of that city. The Sybarites 
 
 were noted for the excess to which they carried the refinements of luxury and sensuality. 
 
 The events which led to the destruction of Syb' aris, about 510 B. (X, are thus related. A 
 democratical party, having gained the ascendancy at Syb' aris, expelled five hundred of the 
 principal citizens, who sought refuge at Crotona. The latter refusing, by the advice of Pytha- 
 goras, to give up the fugitives, a war ensued. Milo led out the Crotoniats, ten thousand in 
 number, who were met by three hundred thousand Syb' arites ; but the former gained a com- 
 plete victory, and then, marching immediately to Syb' aris, totally destroyed the city. (Map 
 No. VIII.) 
 
 3. Taren' turn, the emporium of the Greek towns of Italy, was an important commercial 
 city near the head of the gulf of the same name. It stood on what was formerly an isthmus, 
 but which is now an island, separating the gulf from an inner bay fifteen or sixteen miles in 
 circumference. The early Tarentines were noted for their military skill and prowess, and for 
 the cultivation of literature and the arts ; but their wealth and abundance so enervated their 
 minds and bodies, and corrupted their morals, that even the neighboring barbarians, who had 
 hated and feared, learned eventually to despise them. The Tarentines fell an easy prey to the 
 Romans, after Pyrrhus had withdrawn from Italy. (See p. 150.) The modern town f Toranto, 
 containing a population of about eighteen thousand inhabitants, ocr npies the site of the ancient 
 city. ( Vap No. VIII.)
 
 CHAP, iv.] GRECIAN COLONIES: 117 
 
 are known to us ; but in the fourth century B. C. the Tarentinea 
 stand foremost among the Italian Greeks. 
 
 13. During thb first two centuries after the founding of Nax' os in 
 Sicily, Grecian settlements were extended over the eastern, southern, 
 and western sides of the island, while Him' era 1 was the only Gre- 
 cian town on the northern coast. These two hundred years were a 
 period of prosperity among the Sicilian Greeks, who did not yet ex- 
 tend their residences over the island, but dwelt chiefly in fortified 
 towns, and exercised authority over the surrounding native popula- 
 tion, which gradually became assimilated in manners, language, and 
 religion, to the higher civilization of the Greeks. During the sixth 
 century before the Christian era, the Greek cities in Sicily and 
 southern Italy were among the most powerful and flourishing that 
 bore the Hellenic name. Gela and Agrigen' turn, on the south side 
 of Sicily, had then become the most prominent of the independent 
 Sicilian governments ; and at the beginning of the fifth century we 
 find Gelo, a despot, or self-constituted ruler of the former city, sub- 
 jecting other towns to his authority, and finally obtaining possession 
 of Syracuse, which he made the seat of his empire, (485 B. C.) 
 leaving Gela to be governed by his brother Hiero, the first Sicilian 
 ruler of that name. 
 
 14. Gelo strengthened the fortifications and greatly enlarged the 
 limits of Syracuse, while, to occupy the enlarged space, he dis- 
 mantled many of the surrounding towns, and transported their inhab- 
 itants to his new capital, which now became, not only the first city 
 in Sicily, but, according to Herod' otus, superior to any other Helle- 
 nic power; for we are told that when, in 481 B. C., the Corinthians 
 solicited aid from Gelo to resist the invasion of Xerxes, the Syracu- 
 sans could offer twenty thousand heavy armed soldiers,and, in all, an 
 army of thirty thousand men, besides furnishing provisions |pr the 
 entire Grecian host so long as the war might last ; but as Gelo de- 
 manded to be constituted commander-in-chief of all the Greeks in 
 the war against the Persians, the terms were not agreed to. 
 
 15. During the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, a formidable Car- 
 thaginian force under Hamil' car, said to consist of three hundred 
 thousand men, landed at Panor' mus, a a Carthaginian sea-port on the 
 
 1. Him' era was on the northern coast of Sicily, near the mouth of the river of the same 
 name, one hundred and ten miles north-west from Syracuse. The modern town of Termini, 
 at the mouth of the river Leonard<, occupies the site of the ancient city. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 2. Panor' mus, supposed to have been first settle! by Phoenicians, was in the nort b-western
 
 118 ANCIENT HISTORY. [FART! 
 
 northern coast of the island, and proceeded to attack the Greek city 
 of Him' era. (480 B. C.) Gelo, at the head of fifty-five thousand 
 men, marched to the aid of his brethren ; and in a general battle 
 which ensued, the entire Carthaginian force was destroyed, or com- 
 pelled to surrender, Hamil' car himself being numbered among the 
 slain. The victory of Him' era procured for Sicily immunity from 
 foreign war, while at the same time the defeat of Xerxes at Sal' amis 
 dispelled the terrific cloud that overhung the Greeks in that quarter. 
 
 16. On the death of Gelo, a year after the battle of Him' era, the 
 government fell into the hands of his brother Hiero, a man whose 
 many great and noble qualities were alloyed by insatiable cupidity 
 and ambition. The power of Hiero, not inferior to that of Gelo, 
 was probably greater than that of any other Grecian ruler of that 
 period. Hiero aided the Greek cities of Italy against the Carthagi- 
 nian and Tyrrhenian fleets ; he founded the city of JEi' na, 1 and 
 added other cities to his government. He died after a reign of ten 
 years, and was succeeded by his brother Thrasybi'ilis, whose cruelties 
 led to his speedy dethronement, which was followed, not only by the 
 extinction of the Gelonian dynasty at Syracuse, but by an extensive 
 revolution in the other Sicilian cities, resulting, after many years of 
 civil dissensions, in the expulsion of the other despots who had relied 
 for protection on the great despot of Syracuse, and the establish- 
 ment of governments more or less democratical throughout the 
 island. 
 
 17. The Gelonian dynasty had. stripped of their possessions, and 
 banished, great numbers of citizens, whose places were filled by for- 
 eign mercenaries ; but the popular revolution reversed many of these 
 proceedings, and restored the exiles ; although, in the end, adherents 
 of the expelled dynasty were allowed to settle partly in the territory 
 of Meftana, and partly in Kamarina." After the commotions at 
 tendant on these changes had subsided, prosperity again dawned on 
 
 part of Sicily, and had a good and capacious harbor. It early passed into the bauds of the 
 Carthaginians, and was their stronghold in Magna Graecia. It is now called Palermo, and it 
 the capital city and principal sea-port of Sicily, having a population of about one hundred and 
 fifty thousand inhabitants. It is built on the south-west side of the Bay of Palermo, in a plain, 
 which, from its luxuriance, and from its being surrounded by mountains on three sides, has 
 been termed the " golden shell," conca d? oro. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 1. JEt' no, first called Inessus, was a small town on the southern declivity of Mount JEV na, 
 near Cat' ana. The ancient site, now marked with ruins, bears the name Castro. (Map No. 
 VIII.) 
 
 2. Kamarina was on the southern ccast, about fifty miles south-west from Syracuse, and 
 twenty miles south-east from Gela.
 
 CHAP. IV.] GRECIAN COLONIES. 1 19 
 
 Sicily, and the subsequent period of more than fifty years, to the 
 time of the ^Ider Dionysius, has been described as by far the best 
 and happiest portion of Sicilian history. 
 
 18. At the time of the breaking out of the Peloponnesian war, 
 431 B. C., Syracuse was the foremost of the Sicilian cities in power 
 and resources. Agrigen' turn was but little inferior to her, while in her 
 foreign commerce and her public monuments the latter was not sur- 
 passed by any Grecian city of that age. In the great Peloponnesian 
 struggle, the Ion' ic cities of Sicily, few in number, very naturally 
 sympathized with Athens, and the Dorian cities with Sparta ; and in 
 the fifth year of the war we find the Ion' ic cities soliciting Athens 
 for aid against Syracuse and her allies. Successive expeditions were 
 sent out by Athens, and soon nearly all Sicily was involved in the 
 war, when at length, in 424 B. C., a congress of the Sicilian cities 
 decided upon a general peace among themselves, to the great dissat- 
 isfaction of the Athenians, who were already anticipating important 
 conquests on the island. 
 
 19. A few years later, (417 B. C.,) a quarrel broke out between 
 the neighboring Sicilian cities Selinus and Eges' ta, 1 the latter of 
 which, although not of Grecian origin, had formerly been in alliance 
 with Athens. Selinus was aided by the Syracusans ; and Eges' ta 
 applied to Athens for assistance, making false representations of her 
 own resources, and enlarging upon the dangers to be apprehended 
 from Syracusan aggrandizement as a source of strength to Sparta. 
 The Athenian Nic'ias, most earnestly opposed any farther interven- 
 tion in Sicilian affairs ; but the counsels of Alcibiades prevailed, 
 and in the summer of 415 B. C., the largest armament that had ever 
 left a Grecian port sailed on the most distant enterprizc that Athens 
 had ever undertaken, under the command of three generals, Nic' ias, 
 Lam' achus, and Alcibiades ; but the latter was recalled soon after 
 the fleet had reached Cat' ana, 1 on the eastern coast of the island. 
 
 1. Selinus was a flourishing city of more than thirty thousand inhabitants, on the southern 
 shore of the western part of the island. Its ruins may still be seen near what is called Torre 
 di Pollute. Eges' t<z, called by the Romans Segesta, was on the northern coast, near the 
 modern Alcamo. Selinus and Eges' ta were engaged in almost continual wars with each other. 
 After the Athenian expedition the Egestans called to their assistance the Carthaginians, who 
 took, plundered, and nearly destroyed Selinus; but Eges' ta, under Carthaginian rule, expe- 
 rienced a fate but little better. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 2. Cat' ana, now Catania was at the southern base of Mount Mt' na, thirty-two miles north 
 "rom Syracuse. The distance from the city to the summit of the mountain was thirty miles. 
 -'ati'niia has been repeatedly destroyed by earthquakes, and by torrents of liquid fire from the 
 oeighlx ring volcano ; but it has risen like the fabled phoenix, mor< splendid from its ashes,
 
 120 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAST! 
 
 20. From Cat' ana Nic' ias sailed around the northern coast to 
 Eges' t-a, whence he marched the land forces back through the island 
 to Cat' ana, having achieved nothing but the acquisition of a few in- 
 significant towns, while the Syracusans improved the time in making 
 preparations to receive the invaders. At length, about the last of 
 October, Nic' ias sailed with his whole force to Syracuse defeated 
 the Syracusans in the battle which followed and then went into 
 winter quarters at Nax' os ; but in the spring he returned to his 
 former station at Cat' ana, soon after which he commenced a regular 
 siege of Syracuse. 
 
 21. In a battle which was fought on the grounds south of the city, 
 towards the river Anapus, Lam' achus was slain, although the Athe- 
 nians were victorious. Nic' ias continued to push forward his suc- 
 cesses, and Syracuse was on the point of surrendering, when the ar- 
 rival of the Spartan general Gylip'pus at once changed the fortune 
 of war, and the Athenians were soon shut up in their own lines. 
 
 22. At the solicitation of Nic' ias a large reenforcement, commanded 
 by the Athenian general Demosthenes, was sent to his assistance in 
 the spring of 413; but at the same time the Spartans reenforced 
 Gylip'pus, and, in addition, sent out a force to ravage At'tica. 
 During the summer many battles, both on land and in the harbor of 
 Syracuse, were fought by the opposing forces, in nearly all of which 
 the Syracusaus and their allies were victorious ; and, in the end, the 
 entire Athenian force in Sicily, numbering at the time not less than 
 forty thousand men, was destroyed. " Never in Grecian history," 
 says Thucyd' ides, " had ruin so complete and sweeping, or victory 
 so glorious and unexpected, been witnessed." 
 
 23. Soon after the termination of the contest between the Athe- 
 nians and Syracusans, the Carthaginians again sought an opportunity 
 of invading the island, and established themselves over its entire 
 western half; but they were ably resisted by Dionysius the Elder, 
 " tyrant of Syracuse," who was proclaimed chief of the republic 
 about 405 B. C. ; and it was owing to his exertions that any part 
 of the island was saved from falling into the hands of the enemy. 
 It was at length agreed that the river Him' era 1 should form the 
 limit between the Grecian territories on the east and the Carthagi- 
 
 and is still a beautiful city. The streets are paved with lava ; and houses, palaces, churches, 
 and convents, are built of it. Remains of ancient temples, aqueducts, baths, &c., are numer- 
 ous, The environs are fruitful, and well cultivated. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 1. The river Him' t ra here mentioned, now the Salso, falls into the Mediterranean on the 
 southern coast, to the west of Ccla. (Map No. VIII.)
 
 CHAP. IV.] GRECIAN COLONIES. 12. 
 
 nian dependencies on the west ; but the peace was soon broken by 
 the Carthaginians, who, amid the civil dissensions of the Greeks, 
 sought every opportunity of extending their dominion over the entire 
 island. , 
 
 24. Subsequently the aspiring power of Carthage was che'cked by 
 Tiinoleon, and afterwards by Agath' ocles. The former, a Corinthian 
 by birth, having made himself master of the almost deserted Syra- 
 cuse, about the year 340 B. C., restored it to some degree of its 
 former glory. He defeated the Carthaginians in a great battle, and 
 established the affairs of government on so firm a basis that the 
 whole of Sicily continued, many years after his death, in unusual 
 quiet and prosperity. Agath' ocles usurped the sovereignty of Syra- 
 cuse by the murder of several thousand of its principal citizens in 
 the year 317 B. C. He maintained his power twenty-eight years. 
 Having been defeated by the Carthaginians, and being besieged in 
 Syracuse, with a portion of his army he passed over to Africa, where 
 he sustained himself during four years. In the year 306 he con- 
 cluded a peace with the Carthaginians. He died by poison, 289 B. C., 
 leaving his influence in Sicily and southern Italy to his son-in-law, 
 the famous Pyr' rhus, king of Epirus. After the death of Agath'- 
 ocles, the Carthaginians gained a decided ascendancy in Sicily, when 
 the Romans, alarmed by the movements of so powerful a neighbor, 
 and being invited over to the assistance of a portion of the people 
 of Messana, commenced the first Punic war, (265 B. C.,) and after a 
 struggle of twenty-four years made themselves masters of the whole 
 of Sicily, nearly a hundred years before the reduction of Greece 
 itself to a Roman province. 
 
 25. On the northern coast of Africa, within the district of the 
 modern Barca, the important Grecian colony of Cyrenaica 1 was 
 planted by Lacedaemonian settlers from Thera, 2 an 1V 
 island of the JE' gsen, about the year 630 B. C. Its CYRENA'IOA. 
 chief city, Gyrene, was about ten miles from the sea, having a 
 sheltered port called Apollonia, itself a considerable town. Ovei 
 the Libyan tribes between the borders -of Egypt and the Great 
 Desert, the Cyreneans exercised an ascendancy similar to that which 
 Carthage possessed over the tribes farther westward. About the 
 year 550 B. C., one of the neighboring Libyan kings, finding the 
 Greeks rapidly encroaching upon his territories, declared himself 
 
 1. Cyren&ica, see p. 70. 
 
 '2 Tfiera, now Santorim, belonged to the clusta called the Sporades. (Map No. IIL)
 
 122 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAUT L 
 
 subject to Egypt, when a large Egyptian army marched to his assist- 
 ance, but the Egyptians experienced so complete a defeat that few 
 of them ever returned to their own country. We find that the next 
 Egyptian king, Aniasis, married a Cyrenean. 
 
 26. Soon after the defeat of the Egyptians, the tyranny of the 
 Cyrenean king, Agesilaus, led to a revolt among his subjects, who 
 being joined by some of the neighboring tribes, founded the city of 
 Bar' ca, about seventy miles to the westward of Gyrene. In the 
 war which followed, a great battle was fought with the allies of J3ar' ca, 
 in which Agesilaus was defeated, and seven thousand of his men were 
 left dead on the field. The successor of Agesilaus was deposed from 
 the kingly office by the people, who, in imitation of the Athenians, 
 then established a republican government, (543 B. C.,) under the di- 
 rection of Demonax, a wise legislator of Mantinea. But the son of 
 the deposed monarch, having obtained assistance from the people of 
 Samos, regained the throne of Cyrene, about the time that the Per- 
 sian prince Camby' ses conquered Egypt. Both the Cyrenean and 
 the Barcan prince sent their submission to the great conqueror. Soon 
 after this event the Persian satrap of Egypt sent a large force against 
 Bar' ca, which was taken by perfidy, and great numbers of the in- 
 habitants were carried away into Persian slavery. 
 
 27. At a later period, Cyrene and Bar' ca fell under the power of 
 the Carthaginiaiif they subsequently formed a dependency of Egypt ; 
 and in the year 76 B. C., they were reduced to the condition of a 
 Roman province. Cyrene was the birth-place of the poet Callim'- 
 achus ; of Eratos' thenes the geographer, astronomer, and mathema- 
 tician ; and of Carneades the sophist. Cyrenean Jews were present 
 at Jerusalem on the day of pentecost : it was Simon, a Cyrenean 
 Jew, whom the soldiers compelled to bear the Saviour's cross ; and 
 Christian Jews of Cyrene were among the first preachers of Chris- 
 tianity to the Greeks of Antioch. (Matthew, xxvii. 32 : Mark, xv, 
 21 ' Acts, ii. 10 : vi. 9 : xi. 20.)
 
 CHAP V.] ROMAN HISTORY. 123 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ROMAN HISTORY: 
 
 FROM THE FOUNDING OF ROME, 753 B. C., TO THE CONQUESTS OF GREECE AND 
 CARTHAGE, 146 B. C. = 607 YEARS. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 EARLY ITALY: ROME UNDER THE KINGS: ENDING 510 B. c. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. ITALY names and extent of. 2. Mountains, and fertile plains. 3. Climate. 
 4. Principal States and tribes. 5. Our earliest information of Italy. Etruscan civilization 
 [The Etruscans. The Tiber.] 6. Southern Italy and Sicily colonized by Greeks. The rise of 
 Rome, between the Etruscans on the one side and the Greeks on the other. 7. Sources and 
 character of early Roman history. 8. The Roman legends, down to the founding of Alba.- 
 [Lavin'ium Latium. Alba.] 9. The Roman legends continued, down to the saving ol 
 Rom' ulus and Remus. 10. To the death of Amu' lius. 11. Auguries for selecting the site and 
 name of a city. 12. The FOUNDING OF ROME. [Description of Ancient and Modern Rome.] 
 13. Stratagem of Romulus to procure wives for his followers. [Sabines.] 14. WAR WITH THE 
 SABINES. Treachery and fate of Tarpeia. 15. Reconciliation and union of the Sabines and 
 Romans. Death of Tullius. [Laurentines.] 16. The intervening period, to the death of 
 Rom' ulus. Death of Rom' ulus. 
 
 17. Rule of the senators. Election of NUMA, the 2d king. His institutions, and death. 
 [Janus.] 18. Reign of Tut.' LIUS HOSTIL'IUS, the 3d king, and first dawn of historic truth. 
 19. Legend of the Horatii and Curiatil. 20. Tragic death of Horatia. Submission, treachery, 
 and removal of the Albans. Death of Tul' lius. 21. The reign of AN' cus MAR' TIUS, the 4th 
 king. [Ostia.] 22. TARQUIN THE ELDER, the 5th king. His origin. Unanimously called to 
 the throne. [Tarquin' ii.] 23. His wars. His public works. His death. 24. SER' vius 
 TUL' LIUS, the 6th king. Legends concerning him. Wars, &c. 25. Division of the people 
 into centuries. Federal union with the Latins. Administration of Justice, &c. 26. Displeas- 
 ure of the patricians, and murder of Servius. 27. The reign of TARQUIN THE PROUD, the 7th 
 king. His reign disturbed by dreams and prodigies. 28. The dispute between Sextus, his 
 brothers, and Collatinus. How settled. [Ardea Collatia.] 29. The story of Lucretia, and 
 banishment of the Tarquins. 
 
 1. ITALY, known in ancient times by the names Hespena, Ausonta, 
 Satur' nia, and (Enotria, comprises the whole of the central penin- 
 sula of southern Europe, extending from the Alps in a i. ITALY. 
 southern direction nearly seven hundred and seventy miles, with a 
 breadth varying from about three hundred and eighty miles in north- 
 ern Italy, to less than eighty near its centre. 
 
 2. The mountains of Italy are the Alps on its north-western bound- 
 ary, and the Apennines, which latter pass through the peninsula nearly 
 in its centre, and send off numerous branches on both sides. They 
 are much less rugged than the Alps, and abound in rich forests and
 
 124 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PABT L 
 
 pasture land. But though for the most part mountainous, Italy has 
 some plains of considerable extent and extraordinary fertility. Of 
 these the most extensive, and the richest, is that of Lombardy in the 
 north, watered by the river Po and its numerous branches, embrac- 
 ing an area of about two hundred and fifty miles in length, with a 
 breadth varying from fifty to one hundred and twenty miles, and now 
 containing a vast number of cities. The next great plain stretches 
 along the western coast of central Italy about two hundred milts, 
 from the. river Arno in Tuscany, to Terracina, sixty miles south-east 
 from Rome. Although this plain was once celebrated for its fertility, 
 and was highly cultivated and populous, it is now comparatively a 
 desert, a consequence of the prevalence of malaria, which infects 
 these districts to such an extent as to render them at certain portions 
 of the year all but uninhabitable. The third great plain (the Api'i- 
 lian) lies along the eastern coast, towards the southern extremity of 
 the peninsula, and includes the territory occupied by the ancient 
 Daunians Peuce tians, and Messapians. A great portion of this plain 
 has a sandy and thirsty soil, and is occupied mostly as pasture land 
 in winter. The plain of Naples, on the western coast, is highly fer- 
 tile, and densely peopled. 
 
 3. The climate of Italy is in general delightful, the excessive 
 heats of summer being moderated by the influence of the mountains 
 and the surrounding seas, while the cold of winter is hardly ever 
 extreme. In the Neapolitan provinces, which lie in the latitude of 
 central and southern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, snow is rare, and 
 the finest fruits are found in the valleys throughout the winter. At 
 the very southern extremity of Italy, which is in the latitude of 
 Richmond, Virginia, the thermometer never falls to the freezing 
 point. From a variety of circumstances it appears that the climate 
 of Italy has undergone a considerable change, and that the winters 
 are now less cold than formerly ; although probably the summer- 
 heat was much the same in ancient times as at present. 
 
 4. The principal States of ancient Italy were Cisal' pine Gaul, 
 Etruria, Um'bria, Picenum, Latium, Campania, Sam'nium, Apulia, 
 Calabria, Lucania, and Brutiorum A'ger, the situation of which, 
 together with the names of the principal tribes that inhabited them, 
 may be learned from the map of Ancient Italy accompanying this 
 volume. (See Maps Nos. VIII. and X.) 
 
 5. The earliest reliable information that we possess of Italy rep- 
 resents the ca untry in the possession of numerous independent tribes,
 
 CHAP. V.] ROM AX HISTORY. 125 
 
 many of winch, especially those in the southern part of the peninsula, 
 were, like the early Grecians, of Pelas' gic origin. Of these tribes, the 
 Etrurians or Etrus' cans, 1 inhabiting the western coasts above the 
 Tiber," were the most important ; as it appears that, before the 
 founding of Rome, they had attained to a considerable degree of 
 power and civilization ; and two centuries after that event they were 
 masters of the commerce of the western Mediterranean. Many 
 works of art attributed to them still exist, in the walls of cities, in 
 vast dikes to reclaim lands from the sea, and in subterranean tunnels 
 cut through the sides of hills to let off the lakes which had formed in 
 the craters of extinct volcanoes. 
 
 6. It appears that during the height of Etrus' can power in Italy, 
 the southern portions of the peninsula, together with Sicily, first 
 began to be colonized by Grecians, who formed settlements at Cumse 
 and Neap' olis, as early as the tenth or eleventh century before the 
 Christian era, and at Taren' turn, Crotona, Nax' os, and Syracuse, 
 in the latter part of the eighth century ; and such eventually be- 
 came the number of the Grecian colonies that all southern Italy, 
 in connection with Sicily, received the name of Magna Grecia. (See 
 p. 115.) But while the old Etrurian civilization remained nearly 
 stationary, fettered, as in ancient Egypt, by the sway of a sacerdotal 
 caste, whose privileges descended by inheritance, and while the 
 Greek colonies were dividing and weakening their power by allowing 
 to every city an independent sovereignty of its own, there arose on 
 the western coast, between the Etrus' cans on the one side and the 
 Greeks on the other, the small commonwealth of Rome, whose power 
 ere long eclipsed that of all its rivals, and whose dominion was des- 
 tined, eventually, to overshadow the world. 
 
 1. The Etrurians, or Etrus' can.', were the inhabitants of Etruria, a celebrated country of 
 Italy, lying to the north and west of the Tiber. They were farther advanced in civilizalion 
 than any of their European cotemporaries, except the Greeks, but their origin is involved in 
 obscurity, and of their early history little is known, as their writings have long since perished, ami 
 their hieroglyphic inscriptions on brass are utterly unintelligible. (Maps Nos. VIII. and X.) 
 
 2. The river Tiber, called by the ancient Latins .llbula, and by the Greeks Tlnjmbris, the 
 most celebrated, though not the largest river of Italy, rises in the Tuscan Apennines, and has 
 a general southerly course about one hundred and thirty miles until it reaches Rome, when it 
 turns south-west, and enters the Mediterranean by two mouths, seventeen miles from Rome, 
 terminating in a marshy pestiferous tract. Its waters have a yellowish hue, being discolored 
 by the mud with which they are loaded. Anciently the Tiber was capable of receiving vessels 
 of considerable burden at Rome, and small boats to within a short distance of its source, but 
 the entrance of the river from the sea, and its subsequent navigation, have become so difficult, 
 that the harbor of Ostia at its mouth has long been relinquished, and Civita P'ecchia is now 
 the port of Rome, although at the distance of thirty-six miles north, with which it is connected 
 merely by a road. (Maps \os. VIII. and X.)
 
 126 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART! 
 
 7. What historians have related of the founding of Rome, and of 
 the first century, at least, of its existence, has been drawn from 
 numerous traditionary legends, known, from their character, to be 
 mostly fabulous, and has therefore no valid claims to authenticity. 
 Still it is proper to relate, as an introduction to what is better known, 
 the story most accredited by the Romans themselves, and contained 
 in their earliest writings, while at the same time we express the 
 opinion that it has little or no foundation in truth. 3 - 
 
 8. The Roman legends state that, immediately after the fall of 
 Troy, ./Eneas, a celebrated Trojan warrior, escaping from his devoted 
 country, after seven years of wanderings arrived on the western coast 
 of Italy, where he established a colony of his countrymen, and built 
 the city of Lavin' ium. 1 From Latinus, a king of the country, whom 
 he had slain in battle/and whose subjects he incorporated with his 
 own followers, the united people were called Latini or Latins, and 
 their country Latium? After the lapse of thirty years, which were 
 occupied mostly in wars with neighboring tribes, the Latins, now in- 
 creased to thirty hamlets, removed their capital to Alba, 3 a new city 
 which they built on the Alban Mount, and which continued to be the 
 head of the confederate people during three centuries. 
 
 9. The old Roman legends go on to state, that, at an uncertain 
 date, Prdcas, king of Alba, left two sons at his death, and that 
 Niimitor the elder, being weak and spiritless, suffered Amulius the 
 younger to wrest the government from him, to murder the only son, 
 and to consecrate the daughter of his brother to the service of the 
 temple, in the character of a vestal virgin. But the attempts of 
 Amvilius to remove all claimants of the throne were fruitless, for 
 Syl' via, the daughter of Numitor, became the mother of twin sons, 
 
 1. Lavin' turn, a city of Latium, was about eighteen miles south of Rome. The modern 
 village of Practica, about three miles from the coast, is supposed to occupy the site of the 
 ancient city. (Maps Nos. VIII. and X.) 
 
 2. Ancient Latium extended from the Tiber southward along the coast about fifty miles, to 
 the Circiean promontory. It was afterwards extended farther south to the river Liris, and at a 
 still later period to the Vulturnus. The early inhabitants of Latium were the Latins, (also a 
 general term applied to all the inhabitants of Latium,) Rutulians, Hernicians, and Volscians. 
 (Maps Nos. VIII. and X.) 
 
 3. Alba, appears to have been about fifteen miles south-east from Rome, on the eastern shora 
 of the Alban lake, and on the western declivity of the Alban Mount. The modern villa of 
 Palazzuolo is supposed to mark the site of the ancient Alban city. ( Map No. X.) 
 
 a. "The Trojan legend is doubtless a home sprung fable, having not the least historical truth, 
 nor even the slightest historical importance." Niebuhr's Rom. Hist., i. p. 107. 
 
 "Niebuhr has shown the early history of Rome to be unworthy of credit, and made it impo 
 ilble for any one to revive the old belief." Anthon's Clas. Diet. ; article Rome.
 
 CHAP. V.J ROMAN HISTORY. 127 
 
 Rom' ulus and Remus, by Mars, the god of war. Amvdius ordered 
 that the mother and her babes should be drowned in the Tiber ; but 
 while Syl' via perished, the infants, placed in a cradle of rushes, float- 
 ed to the shore, where they were found by a she wolf, which carried 
 them to her den, and nursed them as her own offspring. 
 
 10. After awhile the children were discovered by the wife of a 
 shepherd, who took them to her cottage on the Palatine hill, where 
 they grew up with her twelve sons, and being the stoutest and 
 bravest of the shepherd lads, they became their leaders in every 
 wild foray, and finally the heads of rival factions the followers of 
 Rom' ulus being called Quinctil' ii, and those of Remus Fabii. At 
 length Remus having been seized and dragged to Alba as a robber, 
 the secret of the royal parentage of the youths was made known to 
 Rom' ulus, who armed a band of his comrades and rescued Remus 
 from danger. The brothers then slew the king Amulius, and the 
 people of Alba again became subject to Numitor. 
 
 11. Rom' ulus and Remus next obtained permission from their 
 grandfather to build a city for themselves and their followers on the 
 banks of the Tiber ; but as they disputed about the location and 
 name of the city, each desiring to call it after his own name, they 
 agreed to settle their disputes by auguries. Each took his station 
 at midnight on his chosen hill, Rom' ulus on the Pal' atine, and 
 Remus on the Av' entine, and there awaited the omens. Remus 
 had the first augury, and saw six vultures flying from north to south ; 
 but scarcely were the tidings brought to Rom' ulus when a flock of 
 twelve vultures flew past the latter. Each claimed the victory, but 
 the party of Rom' ulus, being the stronger, confirmed the authority 
 of their leader. 
 
 12. Rom' ulus then proceeded to mark out the limits of the city 
 by cutting a furrow round the foot of the Pal' atine hill, which he 
 inclosed, on the line thus drawn, with a wall and ditch. n . FOUNDING 
 But scarcely had the walls begun to rise above the sur- OF BOME. 
 face, when Remus, still resenting the wrong he had suffered, insult- 
 ingly leaped over the puny rampart, and was immediately slain, 
 either by Rom' ulus or one of his followers. His death was regard- 
 ed as an omen that no one should cross the walls but to his destruc- 
 tion. Soon the slight defences were completed, and a thousand rude 
 huts marked the beginning of the " eternal city ROME,' U within whose 
 
 1. See description of Rome page 582 and Map. No. X.
 
 128 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART! 
 
 limits strangers from every land, exiles, and even criminals, and 
 fugitives from justice, found an asylum. The date usually assigned 
 for the founding of the city is the 753d year before the Christian era. 
 
 13. But the Romans, as we must now call the dwellers on the 
 Pal' atine, were without wives ; and the neighboring tribes scorn- 
 fully declined intermarriages with this rude and dangerous horde. 
 After peaceful measures had failed, Rom' ulus resorted to stratagem. 
 He proclaimed a great festival ; and the neighboring people, es- 
 pecially the Lat' ins and Sabines," came in numbers, with their 
 wives and daughters, to witness the ceremonies ; but while they were 
 intent on the spectacle, the Roman youths rushed in, and forcibly 
 bore off the maidens, to become wives of the captors. 
 
 14. War followed this outrage, and the forces of three Latin 
 cities, which had taken up arms without concert, were successively 
 defeated. At last the Sabine king, Titus Tatius, brought a power- 
 
 m WAR ^ armv against Rome, which Rom' ulus was unable to 
 WITH THE resist in the open field, and he therefore retreated to 
 SA BINES. ^ e c jj.y^ w hii e he fortified and garrisoned the Capitoline 
 hill, over against the Pal' atine on the north, intrusting the command 
 of it to one of his most faithful officers. But Tarpeia, the daughter 
 of the commander, dazzled by the golden bracelets of the Sabines, 
 agreed to open a gate of the fortress to the enemy on condition that 
 they should give her what they bore on their left arms meaning 
 their golden ornaments. Accordingly the gate was opened, but the 
 traitress expiated her crimes by her death ; for the Sabines over- 
 whelmed her with their shields as they entered, these also being 
 carried on their left arms. To this day Roman peasants believe 
 that in the heart of the Capitoline hill the fair Tarpeia is still sitting, 
 bound by a spell, and covered with the gold and jewels of the Sa- 
 bines. 
 
 15. The Sabines next tried in vain to storm the city, and Rom'- 
 ulus made equally fruitless attempts to recover the fortress which he 
 had lost. While both parties thus maintained their positions, the 
 Sabine women, now reconciled to their lot, and no longer wishing for 
 revenge, but for a reconciliation between their parents and husbands, 
 rushed in between the combatants, and by earnest supplications in- 
 
 1. The territory of the Sbbines lay to the north-east of Rome. At the time when its limits 
 were most clearly defined it was separated from Latium on the south by the river Anio, from 
 Etniria by the Tiber, from Umbria by the river Nar, and from Picenum on the east by the 
 Apennines. (Maps Nos. VIII. and X.)
 
 CHAP. V.] ROM AX HISTORY. I '^9 
 
 duced them to agree to a suspension of hostilities, which terminated 
 in a treaty of peace. The Sabines and Romans were henceforth to 
 form one nation, having a common religion, and Rom' ulus and 
 Tatius were to reign jointly. Not long after, Tatius was slain by 
 some Laurentines 1 on the occasion of a national sacrifice at Laviu'- 
 ium, and henceforward Rom' ulus ruled over both nations. 
 
 16.. At this point in Roman history, remarks Nicbuhr, the old 
 Roman legend, or poetic lay, is suspended until the death of Rom'- 
 ulus ; while the intervening period has been filled by subsequent writers 
 with accounts of Etrus' can wars, which find no place in the ancient 
 legend, and which are probably wholly fictitious. Just before the 
 death of Rom' ulus, who is said to have ruled thirty-seven years, the 
 poetic lay is resumed. It relates that, while the king was reviewing 
 his people, the sun withdrew his light, and Mars, descending in a 
 whirlwind and tempest, bore away his perfected son in a fiery chariot 
 to heaven, where he became a god, under the name of Quirinus. a 
 (B. C. 716.) 
 
 17. The legend further relates that after the death of Rom' ulus, 
 the chosen senators, or elders of the people, who were also called 
 patres, orfat/iers. retained the sovereign power in their iv-. NUMA. 
 hands during a year ; but as the people demanded a king, it was 
 finally agreed that the Romans should choose one from the Sabine 
 part of the population. The election resulted in the choice of the 
 wise and pious Numa Pompil' ius, who had married the daughter of 
 Tatius. After Numa had assured himself by auguries that the 
 gods approved of his election, his first care was to regulate the laws 
 of landed property, by securing the hereditary possession of land to 
 the greatest possible number of citizens, thereby establishing the 
 most permanent basis of civil order. He then regulated the ser- 
 vices of religion, pretending that he received the rituals of the law 
 from the goddess Egeria : he also built the temple of Janus ; a and 
 
 1. The Laurentines were the people of Lauren' turn, the chief city of Liitium. Lauren' turn 
 was eighteen miles south from Rome, on the coast, and near the spot now called Patcrno. 
 (Maps Nos. VIII. and X.) 
 
 2. Jfrnus was an ancient Italian deity, whose origin is traced back to India. He was repre- 
 sented sometimes with two faces looking in opposite directions, and sometimes with four. He 
 was the god of the year, and also of the day, and had charge of the gates of heaven through 
 
 a. Niebuhr deals severely with those writers who, in attempting to deduce historic truth 
 from this poetical fiction, have made the supposition that, instead of an eclipse, there was a 
 tempest, and that the senator j themselves tore Rom' ulus to pieces. (See Niebuhr, i. 127 -8 
 also Schmitz' Rome, p. 20.) 
 
 F*
 
 1 30 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART i 
 
 after a quiet and prosperous reign of forty-two years he fell asleep 
 full of clays and peaceful honors. (G73 B. C.) The legend adds 
 that the goddess Egeria, through grief for his loss, melted away in 
 tears into a fountain. 
 
 18. The death of Nuina was followed by another interregnum, 
 after which the young and warlike Tullus Hostilius was chosen king. 
 A gleam of historic truth falls upon his reign, and the v . TULLUS 
 purely poetic age of Roman story here begins to disap- HOSTIHUS. 
 pear in our confidence that such a king as Tullus Hostilius actually 
 existed, and that during his reign the Albans became united with 
 the Romans. Still, the story of the Alban war, and of subsequent 
 wars during the life of Tullus, retain much of legendary fiction, des 
 titute of historic certainty. 
 
 19. A tradition of the Alban war, preserved by the early poets, 
 relates, that when the armies of Home and Alba were drawn up 
 against each other, their leaders agreed to avert the battle by a 
 combat between three twin brothers on the one side, and three on 
 the other, whose mothers happened to be sisters, although belonging 
 to different nations. The Roman brothers were called Horatii, ancl 
 the Albans Curiatii. Meeting in deadly encounter between the two 
 armies, two of the Horatii fell, but the third, still unwouuded, re- 
 sorted to stratagem, and, pretending to flee, was followed at unequal 
 distances by the wounded Curiatii, when, suddenly turning back, he 
 overcame them in succession. 
 
 20. A mournful tragedy followed. At the gate of the city the 
 victor was met by his sister Horatia, who, having been amar.ced to 
 one of the Curiat>ii, and now seeing her brother exultingly bearing 
 .off the spoils of the slain, and, among the rest, the embroidered 
 cloak of her betrothed, which she herself had woven, gave way to a 
 burst of grief and lamentation, which so incensed her brother that 
 .he slew her on the spot. For this act he was condemned to death, 
 but was pardoned by the interference of the people, although they 
 ordered a monument to be raised on the spot where Horatia fell. 
 By the terms of an agreement made before the combat the Albans 
 were to submit to the Romans ; but not long after this event they 
 showed evidence of treachery, when, by order of Tullus, their city 
 
 which the svui passes ; and hence all gates and doors on earth were sacred to him. January, 
 the first month in the religious year of the Romans, was named af!er him. Hi* temples at 
 Some were numerous, and in time of war the gates of the principal ore w ere open, but in 
 time of peace they were closed to kep wars within.
 
 CHAP V.] ROMAN HISTORY. 131 
 
 was levelled to the ground, and the people were removed to the 
 Ccelian hill, adjoining the Pal' atine on the east. After a reign of 
 thirty-two years, Tullus and all his family are said to have been 
 killed by lightning. (042 B. C.) 
 
 21. "We find the name of Ancus Martius, said to have been a 
 grandson of Numa, next on the list of Roman kings. He is rep- 
 resented both as a warrior, and a restorer of the ordi- VL AXCCS 
 nances and rituals of the ceremonial law, which had fallen MARTIUS. 
 into disuse during the reign of his predecessor. He subdued many 
 of the Latin towns founded the town and port of Ostia 1 built the 
 first bridge over the Tiber and established that principle of the 
 Roman common law, that the State is the original proprietor of all 
 lands in the commonwealth. The middle of his reign is said to have 
 been the era of the legal constitution of the plebeian order, and the 
 assignment of lands to this body out of the conquered territories. 
 He is said to have reigned twenty-four years. 
 
 22. The fourth king of Rome was Tarquinius Priscus, or Tarquin 
 the Elder. The accounts of his reign are obscure and conflicting. 
 By some his parents are said to have fled from Corinth to Tarquin' ii,' 
 a town of Etruria, where Tarquin was born : by others vn- TAEQU i N 
 he is said to have been of Etruscan descent ; but Niebuhr THE ELDER. 
 believes him to have been of Latin origin. Having taken up his 
 residence at Rome at the suggestion of his wife Tanaquil, who was 
 celebrated for her skill in auguries, he there became distinguished 
 for his courage, and the splendor in which he lived ; and his liber- 
 ality and wisdom so gained him the favor of the people that, when 
 the throne became vacant, he was called to it by the unanimous 
 voice of the senate and citizens. (617 B. C.) 
 
 23. Tarquin is said to have carried on successful wars against the 
 Etrus' cans, Latins, and Sabines, and to have reduced all those people 
 under the Roman dominion ; but his reign is chiefly memorable on 
 account of the public works which he commenced for the security 
 and improvement of the city. Among these were the embanking of 
 
 1. Os' tia, the early port and harbor of Rome, once a place of great wealth, population, and 
 importance, was situated on the east side of the Tiber, near its mouth, fifteen miles from 
 Rome. Os' tia, which still retains its ancient name, is now a miserable village of scarcely a 
 hundred inhabitants, and is almost uninhabitable, from Malaria ; the fever which it engenders 
 carrying off annually nearly all whom necessity confines to this pestilential region during the 
 hot season. The harbor of Os' tia is now merely a shallow pool. (Maps N-is. VIII. and X.) 
 
 2. Tarquin' ii, one of the most powerful cities of Etruria, was about f< rty miles north-west 
 from Rome, on the left bank of the river Maria, several miles from its mouth. The ruins of 
 Turcfcnn mark the site of the ancient city. (Maps Nos. VIII. and X.)
 
 132 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART 1 
 
 the Tiber ; the sewers, which yet remain, for draining the marshes 
 and lakes in the vicinity of the capital ; the porticos around the 
 market-place, the race-course of the circus, and the foundations of the 
 city waUs, which were of hewn stone. It is said that Tarquin, after 
 a reign of thirty-eight years, was assassinated at the instigation of 
 the sons of Ancus Martius, who feared that he would secure the sue 
 cession to his son-in-law Servius Tullius, his own favorite, and the 
 darling of the Roman people. (579 B. C.) 
 
 24. Notwithstanding the efforts of the sons of Ancus Martius, the 
 senate and the people decided that Servius should rule over them 
 The birth of this man is said, in the old legends, to have VJII- SERV ius 
 been very humble, and his infancy to have been attended TULLIUS. 
 with marvellous oinens, which foretold his future greatness. Of his 
 supposed wars with the revolted Etrus' cans nothing certain is known ; 
 but his renown as a law-giver rests on more substantial grounds than 
 his military fame. 
 
 25. The first great political act of his reign was the institution of 
 the census, and the division of the people into one hundred and ninety- 
 three centuries, whose rights of suffrage and military duties were 
 regulated on the basis of property qualifications. The several Latin 
 communities that had hitherto been allied with the Romans by treaty 
 he now incorporated with them by a federal union ; and to render 
 that union more firm and lasting, he induced the confederates to 
 unite in erecting a temple on Mount Aventine to the goddess Diana, 
 and there unitedly to celebrate her worship. He also made wise 
 regulations for the impartial administration of justice, prohibited 
 bondage for debt, and relieved the people from the oppressions with 
 which they already began to be harassed by the higher orders. 
 
 26. His legislation was received with displeasure by the patricians ; 
 and when it was known that Servius thought of resigning the crown, and 
 establishing a consular form of government, which would have rendered 
 a change of his laws diificult, a conspiracy was formed for securing 
 the throne to Tarquinius, suruamed the Proud, a son of the former 
 king, who had married a- daughter of Serviiis. The old king Servius 
 was murdered by the agents of Tarquin, and his body left exposed 
 in the street, while his wicked daughter Tullia, in her haste to con 
 gratulate her husband on his success, drove her chariot over her 
 father's corpse, so that her garments were stained with his blood. 
 (535 B. C.) 
 
 ?7 The reign of Tarquinius Superbus, or the Proud, was distin-
 
 CHAP. V.] ROMAN HISTORY. 133 
 
 guished by a series of tyrannical usurpations, which made his name 
 odious to all classes; for although he at first gratified his supporters 
 by diminishing the privileges of the plebeians, or the ^ TA EQUIN 
 common people, he soon made the patricians themselves THE PROUD. 
 feel the weight of his tyranny. The laws of Servius were swept 
 away the equality of civil rights abolished and even the ordinances 
 of religion suffered to fall into neglect. But although Tarquin was 
 a tyrant, he exalted the Roman name by his successful wars, and 
 alliances with the surrounding nations. In the midst of his successes, 
 however, he was disturbed by the most fearful dreams and appalling 
 prodigies. He dreamed that the sun changed its course, rising in 
 the west ; and that when the two rams were brought to him for sac- 
 rifice, one of them pushed him down with its horns. At one time a 
 serpent crawled from the altar and seized the flesh which he had 
 brought for sacrifice : a flock of vultures attacked an eagle's nest in 
 his garden, threw out the unfledged eaglets upon the ground and 
 drove the old birds away ; and when he sent to Delphi to consult the 
 oracle, the responses were dark and fearful. 
 
 28. The reverses threatened were brought upon him by the wick- 
 edness of Sextus, one of his sons. It is related that while the Ro- 
 mans were besieging Ardea, 1 a Rutulian city, Sextus, with his 
 brothers Titus and Aruns, and their cousin Collatinus, happened to 
 be disputing, over their wine, about the good qualities of their wives, 
 when, to settle the dispute, they agreed to visit their homes by sur- 
 prise, and, seeing with their own eyes how their wives were then em- 
 ployed, thus decide which was the worthiest lady. So they hastily 
 rode, first to Rome, where they found the wives of the three Tar- 
 quins feasting and making merry. They then proceeded to Collatia, 2 
 the residence of Collatinus, where, although it was then late at night, 
 they found his wife Lucretia, with her maids around her, all busy 
 working at the loom. On their return to the camp all agreed that 
 Lucrctia was the worthiest lady. 
 
 29. But a spirit of wicked passion had seized upon Sextus, and a 
 few days later he went alone to Collatia, and being hospitably lodged 
 in his kinsman's house, violated the honor of Lucretia. Thereupon 
 
 1. Ardea, a city of Latium, and the capital of the Rutulians, was about twenty-four miles 
 south from Rome, and three miles from the sea. Some ruins of the ancient city are still visible, 
 and bear the name of Ardea. {Maps Nos. VIII. and X.) 
 
 . Calldtia, a town of Latium, was near the south bank of the river Anio, twelve or thirteen 
 miles east from Rome. Its ruins may still be traced on a hill which has obtained the name of 
 ?<ultliatie. (.Maps Nos. VIII. and X.)
 
 134 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART L 
 
 she sent in haste for her father, and husband, and other relatives, 
 and having told them of the wicked deed of Sextus, and made them 
 swear that they would avenge it, she drew a knife from her bosom 
 and stabbed herself to the heart. The vow was renewed over the 
 dead body, and Lucius Junius Brutus, who had long concealed patri- 
 otic resolutions under the mask of pretended stupidity, and thus 
 saved his life from the jealousy of Tarquin, exhibited the corpse to 
 the people, whom he influenced, by his eloquence, to pronounce sen- 
 tence of banishment against Tarquin and his family, and to declare 
 that the dignity of king should be abolished forever. (510 B. C.) 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 THE ROMAN REPUBLIC, FROM THE ABOLITION OF ROYALTY, 510 B.C., 
 
 TO THE BEGINNING OF THE WARS WITH CARTHAGE: 
 
 263 B. C. = 247 YEARS. 
 
 ANALYSIS. J. Royalty abolished. The laws of Servius reestablished. CONSULS elected. 
 2. Aristocratic character of the government. The struggle between the patricians and ple- 
 beians begins. 3. Extent of Roman territory. 4. Conspiracy in favor of the Tarquins. ETRUS'- 
 CAN WAR. 5. Conflicting accounts. Legend of the Etrus' can war. [Clusium.] G. The story 
 of Mutius Scaev' ola. 7. Farther account of the Roman legend. ' The probable truth. 8. Hu- 
 miliating condition of the plebeians after the Etrus can war. 9. Continued contentions. The 
 office of DICTATOR. 10. Circumstances of the first PLEBEIAN INSURRECTION. [Volscians.] 11. 
 Confusion. Withdrawal of the Plebeians. [Mons Sacer.] 12. The terms of reconciliation. 
 Office and power of the TRIBUNES. 13. League with the Latins and Ilernicians. 14. VOL- 
 SCIAN AND ^EQUIAN WARS. Contradictory statements. [/Equians. Corioli.] Proposal of 
 Coriolanus. 15. His trial exile and war against the Romans. 16. The story of Cincinatus. 
 17. The public lands and the fate of Spurius Cassius. 18. Continued demands of the people. 
 Election and office of THE DECEM' VIRS. 19. The laws of the decem' virs. 20. The decem '- 
 virs are continued in office their additional laws and tyranny. 21. The story of Virginia. 
 22. Overthrow of the decem' virs, and death of Appius. 23. Plebeian innovations. The office 
 of CENSORS. 24. Rome, as viewed by the surrounding people. Circumstances that led to the 
 WAR WITH VEIL [Situation of Veil.] 25. Destruction of Veii, and extension of Roman 
 territory. 
 
 26. GALLIC INVASION. Circumstances of liie introduction' of the Gauls into Italy. [Cisalpine 
 Gaul.] 27 The Roman ambassadors. Conduct of Brennus. 28. The Romans defeated by the 
 Gauls. General abandonment of Rome. [The Allia. Roman Forum.] 29. Entrance of the 
 Gauls into the city. Massacre of the Senators. Rome plundered and burned. 30 Vain at- 
 tempts to storm the citadel. The Roman legend of the expulsion of the Gauls. The more 
 probable account. [The Venetians.] 31. The rebuilding of Rome. 32. Renewal of the PLE- 
 BEIAN AND PATRICIAN CONTESTS. Philanthropy and subsequent history of Manlius. 33. Con- 
 tinued oppression of the plebeians. 34. Great reforms made by Licinius Stolo and Lucius Sex- 
 tus. The office of PROCTOR. 35. Progress of the Roman power. The Samnite confederacy 
 [The Samnites.j 36. FIRST SAMNITE WAR. [Cap' ua.] League with lh< Samnites. Latin 
 war. 37 SECOND SAMNITE WAR. Defeat of the Romans, and renewed alt^uice. [Caudine
 
 CHAP. V.] ROMAN HISTORY. 135 
 
 Forks.] 33. The senate declares the treaty void. Magnanimity of Poatius. 39. The THIRD 
 SAMNITIC WAR. Fate of Pontius. [Um'bria.] 40. WAR WITH THE TARENTINKS AND PYR' 
 RHUS. 41. First encounter of Pyr'rhus with the Romans. 42. Pyr' rhus attempts negotiation. 
 His second battle. 43. Story of the generosity of Fabricius, ami magnanimity of Pyr'rhus, 
 Pyr' rhus passes over to Sicily returns, and renews the war is defeated and abandons Italy 
 Roman supremacy over all Italy. [Rubicon. Arnus. Tuscan Sea.] 44. Alliance with Egypt 
 Sicilian affairs. Widening circle of Roman history. 
 
 1. As narrated at the close of the previous section, royalty was 
 abolished at Rome, after an existence of two hundred and forty 
 years. The whole Roman people took an oath that whoever should 
 express a wish to rule as king should be declared an outlaw. The 
 laws of Servius were reestablished, and, according to the 
 
 J 1 1 1 1 J 1 j.1 1 . I. CONSULS. 
 
 code which he had proposed, the royal power was in- 
 trusted to two consuls, 3 - annually elected. The first chosen were 
 Butus and Collatmus. 
 
 2. From the expulsion of the Tarquius, and the downfall of mon- 
 archy, is dated the commencement of what is called the Roman 
 Republic. Yet the government was at this time entirely aristo- 
 cratical ; for all political power was in the hands of the nobility, 
 from whom the consuls were chosen, and there was no third party 
 to hold the balance of power between them and the people. Hence 
 arose a struggle between these two divisions of the body politic ; 
 and it was not until the balance was properly adjusted by the in- 
 creased privileges of the plebeians, and a more equal distribution of 
 power, that the commonwealth attained that strength and influence 
 which preeminently exalted Rome above the surrounding nations. 
 
 3. The territory possessed by Rome under the last of the kings 
 is known, from a treaty made with Carthage in the first year of the 
 Republic, to have extended at least seventy miles along the coast 
 south of the Tiber. Yet all this sea-coast was destined to be lost 
 to Rome by civil dissensions and bad government, before her power 
 was to be firmly established there. 
 
 a. The consuls had at first nearly the same power as the kings ; and all other mfig-.si rates 
 were subject to them, except the tribunes of the people. They summoned the meetings of the 
 senate and of the assemblies of the people they had the chief direction of the foreign affairs 
 of the government they levied soldiers, appointed most of the military officers, and, in time 
 of war, had supreme command of the armies. In dangerous conjunctures they were armed 
 with absolute power by a decree of the senate that " they should take care that the republic 
 receives no harm." Their badges of office were the toga pratexta, or mantle bordered with 
 purple, and an ivory sceptre ; and when they appeared in public they were accompanied by 
 twelve officers called lictors, each of whom carried a bundle of rods, (fas' ces,~) with an a* 
 (sccuris) placed in the middle of them ; the former denoting the power of scourging, or of 
 ordinary punishment- and the hitter, the power of life and leath.
 
 136 A-VCIENT HISTORY. [PAKT I. 
 
 4. The efforts of Tarquin to recover the throne gave rise to a con- 
 spiracy among some of the younger patricians who had shared in 
 the tyrant's extortions. Among the conspirators were the sons of 
 Brutus ; and the duty of pronouncing their fate devolved upon the 
 consul their father, who, laying aside parental affection, and acting 
 the part of the magistrate only, condemned them to death. The 
 ii. ETRUS' CAN cause of the Tarquins was also espoused by the Etrus'-. 
 
 WAR. cans, to whom they had fled for protection, and thus a war 
 was kindled between the two people. 
 
 5. The accounts of the events and results of this war are exceed- 
 ingly conflicting. The ancient Roman legend relates that when 
 Porsenna, king of Clusium, 1 the most powerful of the Etrus' can 
 princes, led an overwhelming force against Rome, the Romans were 
 at first repulsed, and fled across a wooden bridge over the Tiber ; 
 and that the army was saved by the valor of Horatius Codes, who 
 alone defended the pass against thousands of the enemy, until the 
 bridge was broken down in the rear, when he plunged into the stream, 
 and, amid a shower of darts, safely regained the opposite shore. 
 
 6. It is farther related, that when Porsenua had reduced Rome 
 to extremities by famine, a young man, Mutius Scsev' ola, undertook, 
 with the approbation of the Senate, to assassinate the invading king. 
 Making his way into the Etrus' can camp, he slew one of the king's 
 attendants, whom he mistook for Porsenna. Being disarmed, and 
 threatened with torture, he scornfully thrust his right hand into the 
 flame, where he held it until it was consumed, to show that the rack 
 had no terrors for him. The king, admiring such heroism, gave him 
 his life and liberty, when Scaev' ola warned him, as a token of grati- 
 tude, to make peace, for that three hundred young patricians, as brave 
 as himself, had conspired to destroy him, and that he, Scoev' ola, had 
 only been chosen by lot to make the first attempt. 
 
 7. The Roman legend asserts that Porsenna, alarmed for his life, 
 offered terms of peace, which were agreed upon. And yet it is known, 
 from other evidence, that the Romans, about this time, surrendered 
 their city, and became tributary to the Etrus' cans ; and it is prob- 
 able that when, soon after, Porsenna was defeated in a war with the 
 Latins, the Romans embraced the opportunity to regain their inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 8. It was only while the attempts of the Tarquins to regain the 
 
 1. Clusium, now Chiusi, was a town of Etruria, situated on the western bank of the rirer 
 Clanis, a tributary of the Tiber, about eighty-five miles north-west from Rome. (Map Ho. VIII.)
 
 CHAP. V.] ROM AX HISTORY. 137 
 
 throne excited alarm, and the Etrus' can war continued, that the gov- 
 ernment under the first consuls was administered with justice and 
 moderation. When these dangers were over, the patricians: again 
 began to exert their tyranny over the plebeians, and as nearly all 
 the wealth of the State had been engrossed by the former, the latter 
 were reduced to a condition differing little from tne most abject 
 slavery. A decree against a plebeian debtor made not only him, 
 but his children also, slaves to the creditor, who might imprison, 
 scourge, or otherwise maltreat them. 
 
 9. The contentions between the patricians and plebeians were at 
 length carried to such an extent, that in time of war the latter re- 
 fused to enlist ; and as the consuls, for some cause now unknown 
 could not be confided in, the plebeians were induced to consent tc 
 the creation of a dictator, who, during six months, had m . OFFICE OF 
 supreme power, not only over patricians, plebeians, and DKTATOH. 
 consuls, but also over the laws themselves. Under a former law of 
 Valerius the people had the right of appeal from a sentence of the 
 consul to a general assembly of the citizens ; but from the decision 
 of the dictator there was no appeal, and as he was appointed by the 
 Senate, this office gave additional power to the patrician order. 8 - 
 
 10. During a number of years dictators continued to be appointed 
 in times of great public danger ; but they gave only a temporary 
 calm to the popular dissensions. It was during a war with the Vol- 
 scians 1 and Sabines that the long-accumulating resentment of the 
 plebeians against the patricians first broke forth in open IV . PLEBEIAN 
 insurrection. An old man, haggard and in rags, pale INSURRECTION 
 and famishing, escaping from his creditor's prison, and bearing the 
 marks of cruel treatment, implored the aid of the people. A crowd 
 gathered around him. He showed them the scars that he had re- 
 ceived in war, and he was recognized as a brave captain who had 
 fought for his country in eight and twenty battles. His house and 
 farm-yard having been plundered bythe enemy in the Etrus' can war, 
 
 1. The Volscians were the most southern of the tribes that inhabited Latium. Their terri- 
 tory, extending along the coast southward from Antium about fifty miles, swarmed with cities 
 filled with a hardy and warlike race. (Maps Nos. VIII. and X.) 
 
 a. The office of dictator had existed at Alba and other Latin towns long before this time. 
 The authority of all the other magistrates, except that of the tribunes, (see p. 138,; ceased ae 
 soon as the dictator was appointed. He had the power of life and death, except per- 
 haps in the case of knights and senators, and from his decision there was no appeal ; but for 
 any abuse of his power he might be called to account after his resignation or the expiration of 
 his term of office. At first the dictator was taken from the patrician ranks only ; but about the 
 year 356 B. C. it was opened by C. Marcius to the plebeians also. See Niebuhr's Rome, i. 270
 
 138 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAET L 
 
 famine had first compelled him to sell his all, and then to borrow; 
 and when he could not pay, his creditors had obtained judgment 
 against him and his two sons, and had put them in chains. (495 
 B. C.) 
 
 11. Confusion and uproar spread through the city. All who had 
 been pledged for debt were clamorous for relief ; the people spurned 
 the summons to enlist in the legions ; compulsion was impossible, 
 and the Senate knew not how to act. At length the promises of the 
 consuls appeased the tumult ; but finally the plebeians, after having 
 been repeatedly deceived, deserted their officers in the very midst 
 of war, and marched in a body to Mons Sacer, 1 or the Sacred Mount, 
 within three miles of Rome, where they were joined by a vast mul 
 titude of their discontented brethren. (493 B. C.) 
 
 12. After much negotiation, a reconciliation was finally effected 
 on the terms that all contracts of insolvent debtors should be can- 
 celled ; that those who had incurred slavery for debt should recover 
 their freedom ; that the Valerian law should be enforced, and that 
 two annual magistrates, (afterwards increased to five,) called trib 
 
 v. TRIBUNES unes ? whose persons were to be inviolable, should be 
 
 OF THE chosen by the people to watch over their rights, and pre- 
 
 OPLEl vent any abuses of authority. It will be seen that the 
 
 power of the tribunes, so humble in its origin, eventually acquired a 
 
 preponderating influence in the State, and laid the foundation of 
 
 monarchical supremacy. 15 
 
 13. During the same year that the office of the tribunes was 
 created, a perpetual league was made with the Latins, (493 B. C.) 
 and seven years later with the Hernicians, who inhabited the north- 
 eastern parts of Latium, both on terms of perfect equality in the 
 contracting parties, and not, as before, on the basis of Roman supe- 
 
 1. The Mons Sacer, or " Sacred Mountain," is a low range of sandstone hills extending 
 along the right bank of the Anio, near its confluence with the Tiber, about three miles from 
 Rome. (Maps Nos. VIII. and X.) 
 
 a. The tribunes of the people wore no external marks of distinction ; but an officer called 
 orator attended them, to clear the way and summon people. Their chief power at first con- 
 sisted in preventing, or arresting, by the word veto, " I forbid," any measure which they 
 thought detrimental to the interests of the people. 
 
 b. After the plebeians had withdrawn to the " Sacred Mount," the Senate despatched an 
 embassy of ten men, headed by Menenius Agrippa, to treat with the insurgents. Agrippa is 
 said, on this occasion, to have related to the people the since well-known fable of the Belly and 
 the Members. The latter, provoked at seeing all the fruits of their toil and care applied to 
 the use of the belly, refused to perform any more labor ; in consequence of which the whole 
 body was in danger of perishing. The people understood the moral of the fable, and were 
 ready to enter upon a negotiation.
 
 CHAP. VI.] ROMAN HISTORY. 139 
 
 riority. These leagues mado with cities that were once subject to 
 tht Romans, show that the Roman power had been greatly dimin- 
 ished by the plebeian and aristocratic contentions in the early years 
 of the Republic. 
 
 14. In the interval between these treaties, occurred important 
 wars with the Volscians and .ZEquians. 1 The historical VI VOLSCIAX 
 contradictions of this period are so numerous, that little AND ^QUL- 
 reliance can be placed on the details of these wars ; but 
 
 it is evident that the Yolscians and .ZEquians were defeated, and that 
 Caius Marcius, a Roman nobleman, acquired the surname of Coriola- 
 nus from his bravery at the capture of the Volscian town of Corioli 2 
 and that Lucius Quinctius, called Cincinnatus, acquired great dis- 
 tinction by his conduct of the war against the ^SEquians. Coriolunus 
 belonged to the patrician order, and was an enemy of the tribunes ; 
 and it is related that when, during a famine, a Sicilian prince sent a 
 large supply of corn to relieve the distresses of the citizens, Coriola- 
 nus proposed in the Senate that the plebeians should not share in 
 the subsidy until they had surrendered the privileges which they had 
 acquired by their recent secession. 
 
 15. The rage of the plebeians was excited by this proposition, and 
 they would have proceeded to violence against Coriolanus, had not 
 the tribunes summoned him to trial before the assembly of the peo- 
 ple. The senators made the greatest efforts to save him, but the 
 commons condemned him to exile. Enraged by this treatment, he 
 went over to the Volscians was appointed a general in their armies 
 and, after defeating the Romans in several engagements, laid siege 
 to the city, which must have surrendered had not a deputation of 
 Roman matrons, headed by the wife and the mother of Coriolanus, 
 prevailed upon him to grant his countrymen terms of peace. It is 
 said that on his return to the Volsciaus he lost his life in a popular 
 tumult ; but a tradition relates that he lived to a very advanced age, 
 and that he was often heard to exclaim, " How miserable is the con- 
 dition of an old man in banishment." 
 
 16. It is related that during the war with the jEquians the enemy 
 had surrounded the Roman consul in a defile, where there was neither 
 forage for the horses nor food for the men. In this extremity, the 
 
 1. The JEquians dwelt principally in the upper valley of the Anio, north of that stream, and 
 between the Sabinesaud the Marsi. (.Maps Nos. VIII. and X.) 
 
 2. Corioli is supposed to have been about twenty-two or twenty-three miles south-east fron? 
 Rome. A hill now known by the name of Monte Oiocc, is thought, with some degree of prob- 
 ability, to represent the site of this ancient Volscian city. (Map No. X.)
 
 140 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART! 
 
 Senate and people chose Cincinnatus dictator, and sending in haste 
 to inform him of his election, the deputies found him at work in his 
 field, dressed in the plain habit of a Roman farmer. After he had 
 put on his toga, or cloak, that he might receive the message of the 
 Senate in a becoming manner, he was saluted as dictator, and con- 
 ducted into the city. He soon raised an army, surrounded the enemy, 
 and took their whole force prisoners, and at the end of sixteen days, 
 having accomplished the deliverance of his country, resigned his 
 power, and returned to the peaceful pursuits of private life. a 
 
 17. The first acquisitions of territory made by the Romans appear 
 to have been divided among the people at large ; but of late the con- 
 quered lauds had been suffered to pass, by connivance, occupation, or 
 purchase, chiefly into the hands of the patricians. The complaints 
 of the plebeians on this subject at length induced one of the consuls, 
 Spurius Cassius, to propose a division of recently-conquered lands 
 into small estates, for the poorer classes, who, he maintained, were 
 justly entitled to their proportionate share, as their valor and labors 
 had helped to acquire them. But while this proposition alarmed 
 the Senate and patricians with danger to their property, the motives 
 of Cassius appear to have been distrusted by all classes, for he was 
 charged with aiming at kingly power, and, being convicted, was ig- 
 nominiously beheaded, and his house razed to the ground. (458 B. C.) 
 
 18. Still the people continued to demand a share in the conquered 
 lands, now forming the estates of the wealthy, and, as the only way 
 of evading the difliculty, the Senate kept the nation almost constantly 
 involved in war. During thirty years succeeding the death of Cas 
 sius, the history of the Republic is occupied with desultory wars 
 waged against the ^Equians and Volscians, and with continued strug- 
 gles between the patricians and plebeians. At length the tribunes 
 succeeded in getting their number increased from five to ten., when 
 the Senate, despairing of being able to divert the people any longer 
 from their purpose, consented to the appointment of ten persons, 
 
 vn. THE hence called decem virs, who were to compile a body of 
 DECEMVIRS. } awg for the commonwealth, and to exercise all the pow- 
 ers of government until the laws should be completed. (451 B. C.) 
 
 19. After several months' deliberation, this body produced a code 
 
 a. It should be remarked here, that the story of Oincinnatus formed the subject of a beauti- 
 ful poem, to the substance of which most writers have given the credit of historical autlien- 
 ticity, although Niebuhr has shown that the truth of the legend will not stand the test ol 
 criticism. (See Niebuhr, vol. ii. pp. 125-6. and Arnold's Rome, i. pp. 131-5. and notes.)
 
 CHAP. V.] ROMAN HISTORY. 141 
 
 of laws, engraven on ten tables, which continued, down to the time 
 of the emperors, to he the hasis of the civil and penal jurisprudence 
 of the Roman people, though almost concealed from view under the 
 enormous mass of additions piled upon it. The new constitution 
 aimed at establishing the legal equality of all the citizens, and there 
 was a show of dividing the great offices of State equally between patri- 
 cians and plebeians, but the exact character of the ten tables cannot 
 now be satisfactorily distinguished from two others that were sub- 
 sequently enacted. 
 
 20. After the task of the decemvirs had been completed, all classes 
 united in continuing their office for another year ; and an equal num- 
 ber of patricians and plebeians was elected ; but the former appear 
 to have sought seats in the government for the purpose of overthrow- 
 ing the constitution. The decemvirs now threw off the mask, and 
 enacted two additional tables of laws, by which the plebeians were 
 greatly oppressed, for, among the laws attributed to the twelve tables, 
 we find that although all classes 'were liable to imprisonment for 
 debt, yet the pledging of the person affected plebeians only, that the 
 latter were excluded from the enjoyment of the public lands, that 
 their intermarriage with patricians was prohibited, and that consuls 
 could be elected from the patrician order only. Moreover, the de- 
 cemvirs now refused to lay down the powers of government which 
 had been temporarily granted them, and, secretly supported by the 
 patricians, ruled without control, thus establishing a tyrannical oli- 
 garchy. 
 
 21. At length a private injury accomplished what wrongs of a 
 more public nature had failed to effect. Appius Claudius, a leading 
 decemvir, had fallen in love with the beautiful Virginia, daughter of 
 Virginius, a patrician officer ; but finding her betrothed to another, in 
 order to accomplish his purpose he procured a base dependant to 
 claim her as his slave. As had been concerted, Virginia was brought 
 before the tribunal of Appius himself, who, by an iniquitous decision, 
 ordered her to be surrendered to the claimant. It was then that the 
 distracted father, having no other means of preserving his daughter's 
 honor, stabbed her to the heart in the presence of the court and the 
 assembled people. (448 B. C.) 
 
 22. A general indignation against the decemvirs spread through the 
 city ; the army took part with the people ; the power of the decem- 
 virs was overthrown ; and the ancient forms of government were re- 
 stored ; while additional rights were conceded to the commons, by
 
 142 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAET V 
 
 giving to their votes, in certain casns, the authority :>f law. Appius, 
 having been impeached, died in prison, probably by his own hand, 
 before the day appointed for his trial. 
 
 23. Other plebeian innovations followed. After a difficult strug- 
 gle the marriage law was repealed, (B. C. 445,) and two years later 
 military tribunes, with consular powers, were chosen from the ple- 
 beian ranks. One important duty of the consuls had been the taking 
 of the census once in every five years, and a new distribution of the 
 people, at such times, among the different classes or ranks, according 
 to their property, character, and families. But the patricians, un- 
 willing that this power should devolve upon the plebeians, stipulated 
 that these duties of the consular office should be disjoined from the 
 military tribuneship, and conferred upon two new officers of patrician 
 
 viii. OFFICE birth, who were denominated censors ; a and thus the 
 OF CENSORS, long-continued efforts of the people to obtain, from their 
 
 own number, the election of officers with full consular powers, were 
 
 defeated. 
 
 24. But while dissensions continued to mark the domestic councils 
 of the Romans with the appearance of divided strength and wasted 
 energies, the state of affairs presented a different aspect to the sur- 
 rounding people. They saw in Rome only a nation of warriors that 
 had already recovered the strength it had lost by a revolutionary 
 change of government, and that was now marching on to increased 
 dominion without any signs of weakness in the foreign wars it had to 
 maintain. Veii, 1 the wealthiest and most important of the Etruscan 
 cities, had long been a check to the progress of the Romans north of 
 the Tiber, and had often sought occasion to provoke hostilities with 
 
 ix. WAR th y un g republic. At length the chief of the people 
 WITH via. O f y Ji p u t to death the Roman ambassadors ; and the ' 
 Roman Senate, being refused satisfaction for the outrage, formally 
 resolved that Veii should be destroyed. 
 
 25. The Etruscan armies that marched to the relief of Veii were 
 
 1. Vtii, numerous remains of which still exist, was about twelve miles north from Rome, at 
 a place now known by the name ofl'Insola Farnese, {Maps Nos. VIII. and X.) * 
 
 a. An important duty of the censors was that of inspecting the morals of the people. They 
 had the power of inflicting various marks of disgrace upon those who deserved it, such as ex- 
 cluding a senator from the senate-house depriving a knight of his public horse if he did not 
 take proper care of it ; and of punishing, in various ways, those who did not cultivate their 
 grounds properly those who lived too long unmarried and those who were of dissolute mor- 
 als. They had charge, also, of the public works, and of letting out the public lands. The 
 offiw of censor was esteemed highly honorable. In allusion to the severity with which Cato 
 Ibe Elder disch<trged its duties, he is commonly styled, at the present day, " Cato the Ceiwn-."
 
 CHAP. V.] ROMAN HISTORY. 143 
 
 repeatedly defeated by the Roman legions, and the people of Veil 
 were finally compelled to shut themselves up in their city, which was 
 taken by the Roman dictator, Camillus, after a blockade and siege 
 of nearly ten years. (396 B. C.) The spoil taken from the con- 
 quered city was given to the army, the captives were sold for the 
 benefit of the State, and the ornaments and images of the gods were 
 transferred to Rome. The conquerors also wreaked their vengeance 
 on the towns which had aided Veii in the war, and the Roman territory 
 was extended farther north of the Tiber than at any previous period. 
 
 26. But while the Romans were enjoying the imaginary security 
 which these successful wars had given them, they were suddenly as- 
 sailed by a new enemy, which threatened the extinction of the Ro- 
 man name. During the recent Etruscan wars, a vast horde of barba- 
 rians of the Gallic or Celtic race had crossed the Alps x GALUO 
 from the unknown regions of the north, and had sat down INVASION. 
 in the plains of Northern Italy, in the country known as Cisalpine 
 Gaul. 1 Tradition relates that an injured citizen of Clusium, an 
 Etruscan city, went over the mountains to these Gauls, taking with 
 him a quantity of the fruits and wines of Italy, and promised these 
 rude people that if they would leave their own inhospitable country 
 and follow him, the land which produced all these good things 
 should be theirs, for it was inhabited by an unwarlike race ; where- 
 upon the whole Gallic people, with their women and children, crossed 
 the Alps, and marched direct to Clusium. (391 B. C.) 
 
 27. Certain it is that the people of Clusium sought aid from the Ro- 
 mans, who sent three of the nobility to remonstrate with the Brennus, 
 or chieftain of the Gauls, but as the latter treated them with derision, 
 they forgot their sacred character as ambassadors, and joined the 
 Clusians in a sally against the besiegers. Immediately Brennus 
 ordered a retreat, that he might not be guilty of shedding the blood 
 of ambassadors, and forthwith demanded satisfaction of the Roman 
 senate; and when this was refused he broke up his camp before 
 Clusium and took up his march for Rome at the head of seventy 
 thousand of his people. 
 
 28. Eleven miles from the city, on the banks of the Al' ia, 1 a battle 
 
 1. Cisalpine Gaul, meaning "Gaul this side of the Alps," tr distinguish it from " Gaul be- 
 yond the Alps," embraced all that portion of Northern Italy that was watered by the river Po 
 and its numerous tributaries, extending south on the Adriatic coast to the river Rubicon, ami 
 on tha Tuscan coast to the river Macra. (Map No. IX.) 
 
 2. The J)l' ia, now the Jiia, was a small stream that flowed into the Tiber from 'ho &, 
 nbout ter. miles north-east from Rome. (Map No. X.)
 
 144 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART I. 
 
 was fouglit, and the Romans, forty thousand in number, were defeat- 
 ed. (390 B. C.) Brennus meditated a sudden march to Rome to con- 
 summate his victory, but his troops, abandoning themselves to pillage, 
 rioting, and drunkenness, refused to obey the voice of their leader, 
 and thus, the attack being delayed, the existence of the Roman na- 
 tion was saved. The defeat on the Al' ia had rendered it impossible 
 to defend the city, but a thousand armed Romans took possession of 
 the capitol and the citadel, and laying in a store of provisions deter- 
 mined to maintain their post to the last extremity, while the mass of 
 the population sought refuge in the neighboring towns, bearing with 
 them their riches, and the principal objects of their religious venera- 
 tion. But while the rest of the people quitted their homes, eighty 
 priests and patricians of the highest rank, deeming it intolerable to 
 survive the republic and the worship of the gods, sat down in the 
 Forum, 1 in their festal robes, awaiting death. 
 
 29. Onward came the Gauls in battle array, with horns and 
 trumpets blowing, but finding the walls deserted, they burst open the 
 gates and entered the city, which they found desolate and death-like. 
 They marched cautiously on till they came to the Forum, where, in 
 solemn stillness, sat the aged priests, and chiefs of the senate, look- 
 ing like beings of another world. The wild barbarians, seized with 
 awe at such a spectacle, doubted whether the gods had not come 
 down to save the city or to avenge it. At length a Gaul went up to 
 one of the priests and gently stroked his white beard, but the old man 
 indignantly repelled the insolence by a stroke of his ivory sceptre. 
 He was cut down on the spot, and his death was the signal of a 
 general massacre. Then the plundering commenced : fires broke out 
 in several quarters ; and in a few days the whole city, with the ex- 
 ception of a few houses on the Pal' atine, was burnt to the ground. a 
 (390 B. C.) 
 
 30. The Gauls made repeated attempts to storm the citadel, but 
 in vain. They attempted to climb up the rocks in the night, but 
 the cackling of the sacred geese in the temple of Juno awoke Mar- 
 cus Man' lius, who hurled the foremost Gaul headlong down the 
 
 1. The Roman Forum was a large open space between theCapitoline and Pal' atine hills, sur- 
 rounded by porticos, shops, &C-, where assemblies of the people were generally held, justice 
 administered, and public business transacted. It is now a mere open space strewed for the 
 most part with ruins, which, in the course of centuries, have accumulated to such an extent as 
 to raise the surface from fifteen to twenty feet above its ancient level. See p. 582. 
 
 n. Different writers have givei the dale of the taking of Rome by the Gauls, ft >Ri S) to 
 398 B. C.
 
 CHAP. V.J ROMAN HISTORY. 145 
 
 precipice, and prevented the ascent of those whc) were mounting after 
 him. At length famine began to be felt by the garrison. But the 
 host of the besiegers was gradually melting away by sickness and 
 want, and Brennus agreed, for a thousand pounds of gold, to quit 
 Rome a*fd its territory. According to the old Roman legend, Ca- 
 mil'lus entered the city with an army while the gold was being 
 weighed, and rudely accosting Brennus, and saying, " It is the custom 
 of us Romans to ransom our country, not with gold, but with iron," 
 ordered the gold to be carried back to the temple, whereupon a bat- 
 tle ensued, and the Gauls were driven from the city. A more proba- 
 ble account, however, relates that the Gauls were suddenly called 
 home to protect their own country from an invasion of the Venetians. 1 
 According to Polybius this great Gallic invasion took place in the 
 game year that the " peace of Antalcidas" was concluded between 
 the Greeks and Persians. (See p. 89.) 
 
 31. The walls and houses of Rome had now to be built anew, and 
 xo great did the task appear that the citizens clamored for a removal 
 to Veii ; but the persuasion of Camil' lus, and a lucky cmen, in- 
 duced them to remain in their ancient situation. Yet they were not 
 allowed to rebuild their dwellings in peace, for the surrounding na- 
 tions, the Sabines only excepted, made war upon them ; but their 
 attacks were repelled, and one after another they were made to yield 
 to the sway of Rome, which ultimately became the sovereign city of 
 Italy. 
 
 32. Soon after the rebuilding, of the city the old contests between 
 the patricians and plebeians were renewed, with all their former vio 
 lence. The cruelties exercised towards helpless credit- xi. PLEBEIAN 
 ors appear to have aroused the sympathies of the patrician AND PATEI " 
 Man'lius, the brave defender of the capitol, for he sold TESTS. 
 the most valuable part of his inheritance, and declared that so long 
 as a single pound remained no Roman should be carried into bondage 
 for debt. Henceforward he was regarded as the patron of the poor, 
 but for some hasty words was thrown into prison- for slandering the 
 government, and for sedition. Released by the clamors of the mul- 
 titude, he was afterwards accused of aspiring to kingly authority; 
 and the more common account states that he was convicted of ^reason, 
 and sentenced to be thrown headlong from the Tarpeiau rock, the 
 scene of his former glory. But another account states that, being 
 
 I. Ttie Venetians were a people of ancient Italy who dwelt north of the mouths of the Po, 
 ground the head-waters of the Adriatic. (Mnp No. VIII.) 
 
 G 10
 
 146 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAET L 
 
 in insurrection, and in possession of the capitol, a treacherous slave 
 hurled him down the precipice. 3 - (384 B. C.) 
 
 33. The plebeians mourned the fate of Man' lius, but hig death 
 was a patrician triumph. The oppression of the plebeians now in- 
 creased, until universal distress prevailed : debtors were every day 
 consigned to slavery, and dragged to private dungeons; the number 
 of free citizens was visibly decreasing ; those who remained were re- 
 duced to a state of dependence by their debts, and Rome was on the 
 point of degenerating into a miserable oligarchy, when her decline 
 was arrested by the appearance of two men who changed the fate 
 of their country and of the world. 
 
 34. The authors of the great reform in the constitution were Li- 
 cinius Stolo and Lucius Sextius. Confining themselves strictly to 
 the paths permitted by the laws, they succeeded, after a struggle of 
 five years against every species of fraud and violence, in obtaining 
 for the plebeians an acknowledgment of their rights, and all possible 
 guarantees for their preservation. (376 to 371 B. C.) The history 
 of the struggle would be too long for insertion here. As on a former 
 occasion, it was only in the last extremity, when the people had 
 taken up arms, and gathered together upon the Aventiue, that the 
 patrician senate yielded its sanction to the three bills brought forward 
 by Licinius. The first abolished the military tribuneship, and gained 
 for the plebeians a share in the consulship : the second regulated the 
 shares, divisions, and rents, of the public lands : the third regulated 
 the rate of interest, gave present relief to unfortunate debtors, and 
 secured personal freedom against the rapacity of creditors. To savt 
 
 xit. OFFICE something from the general wreck of their power, the 
 OK PR^TOR. patricians stipulated that the judicial functions of tht 
 consul should be exercised by a new officer with the title of Prtztor, 1 
 chosen from the patrician order j yet within thirty -five years after 
 the passage of the laws of Licinius, not only the prastorship, but the 
 dictatorship also, was opened to the plebeians. 
 
 35. The legislation of Licinius freed Rome from internal disseii 
 sions, and gave new development to her strength and warlike ener 
 
 1. The printers were judicial magistrates, officers answering to the modern chief-justice o 
 chancellor. The modern English forms of judicial proceedings in the trial of causes are mostl) 
 taken from those observed by the Roman praetors. At first but one prastor was chosen ; after 
 wards, when foreigners became numerous at Rome, another pnetor was added to administe 
 justice to them, or between them and the citizens. In later times subordinate judges, calle* 
 . Drovincial praetors, were appointed to administer justice in the provinces. 
 
 a. See Niebuhr, i. 275.
 
 CHAP. V.j ROMAN HISTORY. 1 47 
 
 gies. Occasionally the Gauls came down from the north and made 
 inroads upon the Roman territories, but they were invariably driven 
 back with loss; while the Etrus'cans, almost constantly at war with 
 Rome, grew less and less formidable, from repeated defeats. On the 
 south, however, a new and dangerous enemy appeared in the Sam- 
 nite 1 confederacy, now in the fulness of its strength, and in extent 
 of territory and population far superior to Rome and her allies. 
 
 36. Cap'ua, 2 a wealthy city of Campania, having obtained from 
 Rome the promise of protection against the Samnites, xm FIHST 
 the latter haughtily engaged in the war, and with a larger SAMNITE 
 army than Rome could muster invaded the territory of 
 Campania, but in two desperate battles were defeated by the Ro 
 mans. Two years later the Samnites proffered terms of peace, 
 which were accepted. (341 B. C.) A league with the Samnites ap- 
 pears to have broken the connection that had long existed between 
 Rome and Latium, and although the latter was willing to submit to 
 a common government, and a complete union as one nation, yet the 
 Romans, rejecting all compromise, haughtily determined either that 
 their city must be a Latin town, or the Latins be subject to Rome. 
 The result of the Latin war was the annexation of all Latium, and 
 of Campania also, to the territory of the Republic. (338 B. C.) 
 
 37. The Samnites were alarmed at these successes, and Roman 
 encroachments soon involved the two people in another war. The 
 Samnites lost several battles, but under their able general Pontius 
 they effectually humbled the pride of Rome. The armies of the 
 two Roman consuls, amounting to twenty thousand men, 
 
 while passing through a narrow defile call the Caudine SAMNITE 
 Forks, 3 were surrounded by the enemy, and in this situa- WAK< 
 tion, unable either to fight or to retreat, were obliged to surrender. 
 (321 B. C.) The terms of Pontius were that the Roman soldiers 
 should be allowed to return to their homes, after passing under the 
 
 1. The Samnites dwelt at the distance of about ninety miles south-east from Rome, tl.eir 
 territory lying between Apulia on the east and Campania and Latium on the west. : (Maps 
 Nos. VIII. and X.) 
 
 2. Cap' ua, the capital of Campania, was about three miles from the left bank of the river 
 Vultur' nus, (now Vulturno,) about one hundred and five miles south-east from Rome. The 
 remains of its ancient amphitheatre, said to have been capable of containing one hundred 
 thousand spectators, and some of its tombs, &c., attest its ancient splendor and magnificence. 
 Two and a half miles from the site of the ancient city, is the modern city of Cap' ua, on the 
 'eft bank of the Vulturno. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 3. The Caudine Forks were a narrow pass in the Samnife territory, about thirty-five miles 
 north-east from the Cap ua. The present valley of Arpaia, (or Forchia di Arpaia,) not far from 
 Benevento, is thought to answer to this pass.
 
 148 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAUT L 
 
 yoke ; that there shou.d be a renewal of the ancient equal alliance 
 between Rome and Samnium, and a restoration of all placos that 
 had been dependent upon Samnium before the war. For the fulfil- 
 ment of these stipulations the consuls gave their oaths in the name 
 of the republic, and Pontius retained six hundred Roman knights as 
 hostages. 
 
 38. But notwithstanding the recent disaster, and the hard fate 
 that might be anticipated for the hostages, the Roman senate imme- 
 diately declared the peace null and void, and decreed that those who 
 had sworn to it should be given up to the Samnites, as persons who 
 had deceived them. In vain did Pontius demand either that the 
 whole army should be again placed in his power, or that the terms 
 of capitulation should be strictly fulfilled ; but he showed magna- 
 nimity of soul in refusing to accept the consuls and other officers 
 whom the Romans would have given up to his vengeance. Not long 
 after, the six hundred hostages were restored, but on what conditions 
 is unknown. 
 
 39. The war, being again renewed, was continued with brief inter- 
 vals of truce, during a period of thirty years ; and although the Sam- 
 
 xv THIRD n * tes wcre at tmies aided by Umbrians, 1 Etrus'cans, 
 SAMNITE and Gaul, the desperate valor of the Romans repeatedly 
 rAK " triumphed over all opposition. The last great battle, 
 which occurred fifty-one years from the commencement of the first 
 Samnite war, and which decided the contest between Rome and 
 Samnium, has no name in history, and the place where it was 
 fought is unknown, but its importance is gathered from the common 
 statement that twenty thousand Samnites were left dead on the field 
 and four thousand taken prisoners, and that among the latter was 
 Pontius himself. (B. C. 292.) He was led in chains to grace the 
 triumph of the Roman general, but the senate tarnished its honor 
 by ordering the old man to execution. (291 B. C.) One year after 
 the defeat of Pontius, the Samnites submitted to the terms dictated 
 by the conquerors. (290 B. C.) 
 
 40. The Samnite wars had made the Romans acquainted with the 
 Grecian cities on the eastern coast, and it was not long before they 
 
 xvi WAR f un( l a pretext for war with Taren' turn, the wealthiest 
 
 WITH THE of the Greek towns of Italy. The Tai-entines, abandoned 
 
 ' ES< to ease and luxury, had often employed mercenary Gre- 
 
 1. Dm' bria, the territory of the Umbrians, was ea,< t of Etruria, on the left bank of the Tiber, 
 and nr rth of th* Sabine territory. (Maps Nos. VIU. and X.)
 
 CHAP, y.] ROMAN HISTORY. 149 
 
 cian troops in their wars with the rude tribes by which they were 
 surrounded, and now, when pressed by the Romans, they again had 
 recourse to foreign aid, and applied for protection to Pyr' rhus, king 
 of Epirus, who has previously been brought under our notice in con- 
 nection with events in Grecian history. (See p. 106.) 
 
 41. Pyr' rhus, ambitious of military fame, accepted the invitation 
 of the Tarentines, and passed over to Taren' turn at the head of an 
 army of nearly thirty thousand men, having among his forces twenty 
 elephants, the first of those animals that had been seen in Italy. In 
 the first battle, which was fought with the consul Lsevinus, seven 
 times was Pyr' rhus beaten back, and to his elephants he was finally' 
 indebted for his victory. (280 B. C.) The valor and military skill 
 of the Romans astonished Pyr' rhus, who had expected to encounter 
 only a horde of barbarians. As he passed over the field of battle 
 after the fight, and marked the bodies of the Romans who had fallen 
 in their ranks without turning their backs, and observed their counte- 
 nances, stern even in death, he is said to have exclaimed in admira- 
 tion : " With what ease I could conquer the world had I the Ro- 
 mans for soldiers, or had they me for their king." 
 
 42. Pyr' rhus now tried the arts of negotiation, and for this pur- 
 pose sent to Rome his friend Cineas, the orator, who is said to have 
 won more towns by his eloquence than Pyr' rhus by his arms ; but 
 all his proposals of peace were rejected, and Cineas returned filled 
 with admiration of the Romans, whose city he said, was a temple, 
 and their senate an assembly of kings. The war was renewed, and 
 in a second battle Pyr' rhus gained a dearly-bought victory, for he 
 left the flower of his troops on the field. " One more such victory," 
 he replied to those who congratulated him, " and I am undone '' 
 (279 B. C.) 
 
 43. It is related that while the armies were facing each other the 
 third time, a letter was brought to Fabricius, the Roman consul and 
 commander, from the physician of Pyr' rhus, offering, for a suitable 
 reward, to poison the king, and that Fabricius thereupon nobly in- 
 formed Pyr' rhus of the treachery that was plotted against him. 
 When the message was brought to Pyr' rhus, he was astonished at 
 the generosity of his enemy, and exclaimed, " It would be easier 
 to turn the sun from his course than Fabricius from the path of 
 honor." Not to be outdone in magnanimity he released all his 
 prisoners without ransom, and soon after, withdrawing his forces, 
 passed over into Sicily, where his aid had been requested by the
 
 150 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAST I. 
 
 Greek cities against the Carthaginians. (276 B. C. Seep. 121.) Re- 
 turning to Italy after an absence of three years, he renewed hostili- 
 ties with the Romans, but was defeated in a great battle by the consul 
 Curius Dentatus, after which he left Italy with precipitation, and 
 sought to renew his broken fortunes in the Grecian wars. The de- 
 parture of Pyr' rhus was soon followed by the fall of Taren' turn, 
 and the establishment of Roman supremacy over all Italy, from the 
 Rubicon' and the Arnus," on the northern frontier of Umbria and 
 Etruria, to the Sicilian straits, and from the Tuscan 3 sea to the 
 Adriat' ic. 
 
 44. Sovereigns of all Italy, the Romans now began to extend their 
 influence abroad. Two years after the defeat of Pyr' rhus, Ptol' emy 
 Philadelphus, king of Egypt, sought the friendship and alliance of 
 Rome by embassy, and the Roman senate honored the proposal by 
 sending ambassadors in return, with rich presents, to Alexandria. 
 An interference with the affairs of Sicily, soon after, brought on a 
 war with Carthage, at this time a powerful republic, superior in 
 strength and resources to the Roman. From this period the Roman 
 annals begin to embrace the histories of surrounding nations, and 
 the circle rapidly enlarges until all the then known world is drawn 
 within the vortex of Roman ambition. f 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 THE ROMAN REPUBLIC, FROM THE BEGINNING OF lt.K CARTHAGINIAN WARS, 
 
 263 B. C, TO THE REDUCTION OF GREECE AND CARTHAGE TO THE 
 
 CONDITION OF ROMAN PROVINCES: 146 B. C. = 117 YEARS. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. Geographical account of CARTHAGE. [Tunis.] 2. African dominions of 
 Carthage. Foreign possessions. Trade. [Sardinia. Corsica. Balearic Isles. Malta.] 3. 
 Circumstances of Roman interference in the affairs of Sicily. 4. Commencement of the FIRST 
 PUNIC WAR. The Carthaginians driven from Sicily. The Romans take Agrigentum. 5. The 
 Carthaginians ravage Italy. Building of the first Roman fleet. First naval encounter with the 
 
 1. The Rubicon, which formed in part the boundary between Italy proper and Cisalpine 
 Gaul, is a small stream which falls into the Adriat' ic, eighteen or twenty miles south of Rav- 
 enna. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 2. The river Jlrnus (now the Jlrno) was the boundary of Etruria on the north until the time 
 of Augustus. On both its banks stood Florentia, the modern Florence ; and eight miles from 
 its mouth, on its right bank, stood Pisa;, the modern Pisa. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 3. The Tuscan Sea was that part of the Mediterranean which extended along the coast o* 
 Etruria, or Tuscany. (Map No. VIII.)
 
 CHAP. ( V] ROMAN HISTORY. 151 
 
 Carthaginians. 6. Roman i isign of carrying the war into Africa. Second defeat of the Car- 
 thaginians. 7. Regains n.vades the Carthaginian territory. His first successes, and final de- 
 feat. [Hermaean promontory. Clypea.] 8. Roman disasters on the sea. Reduction of the 
 Roman fleet. Roman victory in Sicily. 9. Regulus is sent to Rome with proposals of peace. 
 His return to Carthage, and subsequent fate. 10. Subsequent events of the war. Conditions 
 of the peace, and extension of the Roman dominion. 
 
 11. General peace. Circumstances that led to the ILLYR'IAN WAR. [Illyr'ians.] 12. Re- 
 sults of the war. Gratitude of the Greeks. WAR WITH THE GAULS. [Clastidium.] 13. Ham'- 
 Wear's designs upon Spain. His enmity to the Romans. [Spain.] 14. Progress of the Cartha- 
 ginians in Spain. Hannibal's conquests there. Roman embassy to Carthage. [Saguutuin. 
 Iberus. Catalonia.] 
 
 15. Opening of the SECOND PUNIC WAR. Plans of the opposing generals. Hannibal's march 
 to Italy. Battles on the Ticiuus and the Trebia. [Gaul. Marseilles. Turin. Ticinus. Nu- 
 midia. R. Po. Trebia.] 16. Battles of Trasimenus and Cannoe. [Trasimenus. Cannae.] 17. 
 Defection from the cause of Rome. Courage, and renewed efforts, of the Romans. 18. Hanni- 
 bal at Capua. Successful tactics of Fabius Maximus. Hasdrubal. Fall of Syracuse. [Melaurus. 
 Archimedes.] 19. Scipio carries the war into Africa. His successes. Recalf of Hannibal, 
 from Italy. [Utica.] 20. Confidence of the Carthaginians in Hannibal. Battle of Zama. The 
 terms of peace. Triumph of Scipio. [Zama.] 
 
 21. The distresses which the war had brought upon the Romans. Their unconquerable 
 spirit, and renewed prosperity. 22. State of the world favorable to the advancement of the 
 Roman republic. 23. A GRECIAN WAR. 24. SYRIAN WAR. Terms of the peace. Disposal of 
 the conquered provinces. [Magnesia. Pergamus.] 25. The fate of Hannibal and Scipio. 26. 
 Reduction of Greece. THE THIRD PUNIC WAR. Relations of the Carthaginians and Romana 
 since the battle of Zama. 27. Condition of Carthage. Roman armament. Demands of the 
 Romans. 28. The exasperated Carthaginians prepare for war. 29. Events and results of the 
 contest. Destruction of Carthage, 146 B. C. 
 
 1. Carthage, believed to have been founded by a Phoenician colony 
 from Tyre in the ninth century before the Christian era, was situated 
 on a peninsula of the northern coast of Africa, about 
 
 twelve miles, according to Livy, north-east from the 
 modern city of Tunis, 1 but, according to some modern writers, 
 only three or four milps. Probably the city extended over a great 
 part of the space between Tunis and Cape Carthage. Its harbor 
 was southward from the city, and was entered from what is now the 
 Gulf of Tunis. 
 
 2. The Carthaginians early assumed and maintained a dominion 
 over the surrounding Libyan tribes. Their territory was bounded 
 on the east by the Grecian Cyrenaica ; their trading posts ex- 
 tended westward along the coast to the pillars of Hercules ; and 
 among their foreign possessions may be enumerated their depen- 
 
 1. Tunis is about four milos from the sea, and three miles south-west from the ruins of 
 ancient Cartbage. Among these ruins have been discovered numerous reservoirs or large 
 cisterns, and the remains of a grand aqueduct which brought water to the city from a distance 
 of at least fifty miles. According to Strabo, Tunis, or Tunes, existed before the foundation cf 
 Carthage. The chief events in the history of Tunis are its numerous seigea and captures, 
 (See pp. 333-5 10. Map No. VIII.)
 
 152 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART 1 
 
 dencies in south-western Spain, in Sicily, and in Sardinia, 1 Corsica,' 
 the Balearic Isles, 5 and Malta. 4 It is believed that they carried on 
 an extensive caravan trade with the African nations as far as the 
 Niger ; and it is known that they entered into a commercial treaty 
 with Rome in the latter part of the sixth century ; yet few details 
 of their history are known to us previous to the beginning of the 
 first Carthaginian war with Syracuse, about 480 B. C. 
 
 3. At the time to which we have brought down the details of Ro- 
 man history, the Mainertines, a band of Campanian mercenaries, 
 who had been employed in Sicily by a former king, having estab- 
 lished themselves in the island, and obtained possession of Messaiia, 
 by fraud and injustice, quarrelled among themselves, one party seek- 
 ing the protection of Carthage, and the other that of Rome. The 
 Greek towns of Sicily were for the most part already in friendly al- 
 liance with the Carthaginians, who had long been aiming at the com- 
 plete possession of the island ; and the Romans did not hesitate to 
 avail themselves of the most trifling pretexts to defeat the ambitious 
 designs of their rivals. 
 
 4. The first Punic a war commenced 263 years B. C., eight years 
 ii. FIIIST after the surrender of Taren' turn, when the Romans 
 
 PUNIC WAR. ma( j e a descent upon Sicily with a large army under the 
 
 1. Sardinia is a hilly but fertile island of the Mediterranean, about one hundred and thirty 
 miles south-west from the nearest Italian coast, At an early period the Carthaginians formed 
 settlements there, but the shores of the island fell into the hands of the Romans in the interval 
 between the first and second Punic wars, 237 B. C. The inhabitants of the interior bravely de- 
 fended themselves, and were never completely subdued by the Roman arms. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 2. Corsica, lies directly north of Sardinia, from which it is separated by the strait of Bonifacio, 
 ten miles in width in the narrowest part. Some Greeks from Phocis settled here at an early 
 period, but were driven out by the Carthaginians. The Romans took the island from the latter 
 231 B.C. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 3. The Balearic. Isles were those now known as Majorca and Minorca, the former of which 
 is one hundred and ten miles east from the coast of Spaijn. By some the ancient Ebusus, now 
 Ivica, is ranked among the Baleares. The term Balearic is derived from the Greek word 
 ballein, " to throw," alluding to the remarkable skill of the inhabitants in lining the sling 
 At an early date the Phoenicians formed settlements in the Baleares. They were succeeded by 
 the Carthaginians, from whom the Romans, under Q. Metellus, conquered these islands 123 
 1!. C. (Map No. IX.) 
 
 4. Malta, whose ancient name was Mclita, is an island of the Mediterranean, sixty miles 
 south from Sicily. The Phoenicians early planted a colony here. It fell into the hands of the 
 Carthaginians about four hundred years before the Christian era, and in the second Punic war 
 it was conquered by the Romans, who made it an appendage of their province of Sicily. See 
 also p. 469. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 a. The term Punic means simply "Carthaginian." It is a word of Greek origin, pkoinikcs, 
 iu its sense of purple, which the Greeks applied to Phoenicians and Carthaginians, in allusion 
 to the famous purple or crimson of Tyre, the parent city of Carthage. The Romans, adapting 
 the word to the analogy of the Latin tongue, changed it to Punicus, whence the English woicf 
 Fvnic.
 
 CHAP..V.] ROMAN HISTORY. 153 
 
 commaud of the consul Claudius. After they had gained possessir n of 
 Messana, in the second year of the war, Hiero, king of Syracuse, 
 the second of the name, deserted his former allies and joined the 
 Romans, and ere long the Carthaginians were driven from their most 
 important stations in the island, although their superior naval power 
 still enabled them to retain the command of the surrounding seas, 
 and the possession of all the harbors in Sicily. The Carthaginians 
 fortified Agrigentum, a place of great natural strength ; yet the llo- 
 mans besieged the city, which they took by storm, after defeating an 
 immense army that had been sent to its relief. (2G2 B. C.) 
 
 5. But while the Sicilian towns submitted to the Roman arms, a 
 Carthaginian fleet of sixty ships ravaged the coast of Italy ; and the 
 Romans saw the necessity of being able to meet the enemy on their 
 own element. Unacquainted with the building of large ships, they 
 must have been obliged to renounce their design had not a Cartha- 
 ginian ship of war been thrown upon the Italian coast by a storm 
 From the model thus furnished a hundred and thirty ships were 
 built within sixty days after the trees had been felled. The Cartha- 
 ginians ridiculed the awkwardness and clumsiness of their structure, 
 
 O ' 
 
 and thought to destroy the whole fleet in a single encounter ; but the 
 Roman commander, having invented an elevated draw-bridge, with 
 grappling irons, for the purpose of close encounter and boarding, 
 boldly attacked the enemy, and took or destroyed forty-five of the 
 Carthaginian vessels in the first battle, while not a single Roman ship 
 was lost. (260 B. C.) 
 
 6. After the war had continued eight years with varied success, in- 
 volving in its ravages not only Sicily, but Sardinia and Corsica also, 
 a Roman armament of three hundred and thirty ships, intrusted to 
 the command of the consuls Regulus and Manlius, was prepared for 
 the great enterprise of carrying the war into Africa. But the Car- 
 thaginians met these preparations with equal efforts, and under their 
 two greatest commanders, Hanno and Hamil' car, went out to meet 
 the enemy with three hundred and fifty ships, which carried no less 
 than a hundred and fifty thousand men. In the engagement that 
 followed, the rude force of the Romans, aided by their boarding 
 bridges, overcame all the advantages of naval art and practice. 
 Again the Carthaginians were defeated, more than thirty of their 
 ships being sunk, and sixty-four, with all their crews, taken. (256 
 B C.) 
 
 7. Regulus proceeded to Africa, and landing on the eastern coast
 
 154 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART!. 
 
 of tli 3 Hermaean promontory 1 took Clyp' ea" by storin, conquered 
 Tunis, received the submission of seventy-four towns, and laid waste 
 the country to the very gates of Carthage. An embassy sued for 
 peace in the Roman camp ; but the terms offered by Regulus were 
 little better than destruction itself, and Carthage would probably 
 have perished thus early, had not foreign aid unexpectedly come to 
 her assistance. All of a sudden we find Xanthip'pus, a Spartan 
 general, with a small body of Grecian troops, among the Carthagi- 
 nians, promising them victory if they would give him the conduct of 
 the war. A presentiment of deliverance pervaded the people, and 
 Xanthip' pus, after having arranged and exercised the Carthaginian 
 army before the city, went out to meet the greatly superior forces of 
 the Romans, and gained a complete victory over them. (255 B. C.) 
 Regulus himself was taken prisoner, and, 'out of the whole Roman' 
 army, only two thousand escaped, and shut themselves up in Clyp'ea. 
 Of Xanthip' pus nothing is known beyond the events connected with 
 this Carthaginian victory. 
 
 8. A Roman fleet, sent to bring off the garrison of Clyp' ea, gained 
 a signal success over the Carthaginians near the Hernuean promon- 
 tory, but on the return voyage, while off the southern coast of Sicily, 
 was nearly destroyed by a tempest. Another fleet that had laid 
 Waste the Libyan coast experienced a similar fate on its return, a 
 hundred and fifty ships, and the whole booty, being swallowed up in 
 the waves. The Romans were discouraged by these disasters, and 
 for a time abandoned the sea to their enemies, the senate having at 
 one time decreed that the fleet should not be restored, but limited 
 to sixty ships for the defence of the Italian coast and the protection 
 of transports. Still the war was continued on the land, and in Sicily 
 the Roman consul Metellus gained a great victory over the Cartha- 
 ginians near Panor' mus, killing twenty thousand of the enemy, and 
 taking more than a hundred of their elephants. (250 B. C.) This 
 was the last great battle of the first Punic war, although the contest 
 was continued in Sicily, mostly by a series of slowly-conducted sieges, 
 eight years longer. 
 
 9. Soon after the defeat at Panor' mus, the Carthaginians sent an 
 embassy to Rome with proposals of peace. Regulus was taken from 
 
 1. The Hermann promontory, or " promontory of Mercury," is the same as the modern Cape 
 Bon, usually called the northern cape of Africa, at a distance of about fort"-flve miles north- 
 east from the site of Carthage. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 fl. Clyp' ea, now Aklib' z'o, was situated on the peninsula which terminates in Cape Bon, a 
 ihort distance south from the cape. (Map No. VIII.)
 
 CHAB. V.] ROMAX HISTORY. 155 
 
 his dungeon to accompany the embassy, the Carthaginians trusting 
 that, weary of his long captivity, he would urge the senate to accept 
 the proffered terms ; but the inflexible Roman persuaded the senate 
 to reject the proposal and continue the war, assuring his countrymen 
 that the resources of Carthage were already nearly exhausted. 
 Bound by his oath to return as a prisoner if peace were not con- 
 cluded, he voluntarily went back to his dungeon. It is generally 
 stated that after his return to Carthage he was tortured to death by 
 the exasperated Carthaginians. But although his martyrdom has 
 been sung by Roman poets, and his self-sacrifice extolled by orators, 
 there are strong reasons for believing that he died a natural 
 death. 3 - 
 
 10. The subsequent events of the first Punic war, down to within 
 a year of its termination, were generally unfortunate to the Romans; 
 but eventually the Carthaginian admiral lost nearly his whole fleet 
 in a naval battle. (241 B. C.) Again the Carthaginians, having 
 exhausted the resources of their treasury, and unable to equip 
 another fleet, sought peace, which was finally concluded on the con- 
 ditions that Carthage should evacuate Sicily, and the small islands 
 lying between it and Italy, pay three thousand two hundred talents 
 of silver, and restore the Roman prisoners without ransom. (B. C. 
 240.) Sicily now became a Roman province ; Corsica and Sardinia 
 were added two years later ; and the sway of Rome was extended 
 over all the important islands which Carthage had possessed in the 
 Mediterranean. 
 
 1 1. Soon after the termination of the first Punic war, Rome found 
 herself at peace with all the world, and the temple of Janus was 
 shut for the second time since the foundation of the city. m JLLY R'- 
 But the interval of repose was brief. A war soon broke IAN WAE - 
 out with the Illyr' ians, 1 which led the Roman legions, for the first 
 time, across the Adriat' ic. (229 B. C.) The Illyr' ians had com- 
 mitted numerous piracies on the Italian coasts, and when ambassa- 
 dors were sent to demand reparation, Teu' ta, the Illyr' ian queen, 
 told them that piracy was the national custom of her subjects, and 
 she could not forbid them what was their right and privilege. One 
 of the ambassadors thereupon told her that it was the custom of the 
 
 1. The Illyr' ians were inhabitants of Illyr' ia or Illyr' icum, a country bordering on the 
 Adriat' ic sea, opposite Italy, and bordered on the south-east by Epii us and Macedonia. (Map 
 
 NO. vm.) 
 
 a. Niebuhr, P. iii. p. 275, and iv. 70.
 
 156 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAUT I 
 
 Romans to do away with bad customs ; and so incensed was the 
 queen at his boldness that she procured his assassination. 
 
 12. The Illyr' ians, after successive defeats, were glad to conclude 
 a peace with the Romans, and to abandon their piracies, both on the 
 Italian and Grecian coasts. (228 B. C.)" Several Greek communi- 
 ties showed themselves grateful for the favor ; a copy of the treaty 
 was read in the assembly of the Achjean league ; and the Corinthians 
 conferred upon the Romans the right of taking part in the Isthmian 
 games. Roman encroachments on the territory of the Gauls next 
 
 iv WAR brought on a war with that fierce people, and a vast swarm 
 WITH THE of the barbarians poured down upon Italy, and advanced 
 GAULS. irresistibly as far as Clusium, a distance of only three 
 days' journey from Rome. (22G B. C.) After four years continu- 
 ance the war was ended by a great victory gained over the Gauls by 
 Claudius Marcellus, at Clastid' ium, 1 where the noted Gallic leader, 
 Viridomarus, was slain. (222 B. C.) 
 
 13. While Rome was thus engaged, events were secretly ripening 
 for another war with Carthage. Hamil' car, the soul of the Cartha- 
 ginian councils, and the sworn enemy of Rome, had turned his eyes 
 to Spain, 11 with the view of forming a province there which should 
 compensate for the loss of Sicily and Sardinia. " I have three sons," 
 said this veteran warrior, " whom I shall rear like so many lion's 
 whelps against the Romans." When he set out for Spain, where 
 Carthage then had several colonies, he took his son Hannibal, then 
 only nine years of age, to the altar, and made him swear eternal 
 enmity to Rome. 
 
 14. In a few years the Carthaginians gained possession of all the 
 south of Spain, and Hamil' car being dead, the youthful Hannibal, 
 who proved himself the greatest general of antiquity, was appointed 
 to the command of their armies. The rapid progress of his Spanish 
 conquests alarmed the Romans. When the people of Sagun' turn, 3 
 
 1. Cluftid' ium, (now Ckiastr.ggioJ) was in that part of Cisalpine Gaul called Liguria, south 
 of the river Po, and a short distance south-east from the modern Pavia. (See Pavia, Map No. 
 VIII.) 
 
 2. Spain, (consisting of the present Spain and Portugal,) called by the Greeks Iberia, ami by 
 the Romans Hispania, embraced all the great peninsula In the south-west of Europe. The 
 divisions by which it is best known in ancient history are those of Tarraconensit, T.vsitania^ 
 and B&tica, which were made during the reign of Augustus, when, for the first time, the 
 country was wholly subdued by the Romans. (Map tfo. XIII.) 
 
 3. Safrun' turn was built on a hill of black marble in the east of Spain, about four miles from 
 the Mediterranean, and fifteen miles north-cast from the modern Valencia. Half way up the 
 hill are still to be seen the ruins of a theaire, forming an exact semi-circle, and capable of 
 accommodating nine thousand spectators. Other ruins are found in the vicinity. The castlo ot
 
 CHAP. V.] ROM AX HISTORY. 157 
 
 a Grecian city on the eastern coast, found themselves exposed to his 
 rage, they applied to Rome for aid ; but the ambassadors of the 
 latter power, who had been sent to remonstrate with Hannibal, were 
 treated with contempt ; and Sagun' turn, after a siege of eight months, 
 was taken. (219 13. C.) Hannibal then crossed the Iberus, 1 and 
 invaded the tribes of Catalonia, 2 which were in alliance with Rome. 
 A Roman embassy was then sent to Carthage with the preposterous 
 demand that Hannibal and his army should be delivered up as satis- 
 faction for the trespass upon Roman territory ; and when this was 
 refused, the Roman commissioners, according to the prescribed form 
 of their country, made the declaration of war. Both parties were 
 already prepared for the long-anticipated -contest. (218 B. C.) 
 
 15. The plan of Hannibal, at the opening of the second Punic 
 war, was to carry the war into Italy ; while that of the Roman con- 
 suls, Publius Scipio and Sernpronius, was to confine it to Spain, and 
 to attack Carthage. Hannibal quickly passed over the v . SECOND 
 Pyrenees, and rapidly traversing the lower part of Gaul, 3 PUNIC WAR - 
 though opposed by the warlike tribes through which his march lay, 
 and avoiding the army of Scipio, which had lauded at Marseilles, 4 
 crossed the Alps at the head of nearly thirty thousand men, and had 
 taken Turin 6 by storm before Scipio could return to Italy to oppose 
 
 citadel on the top of the hill has been successively occupied by the Sagun' tines, Carthaginians, 
 Romans, Moors, and Spaniards. Along the foot of the hill has been built the modern town of 
 Murviedro, now containing a population of about six thousand inhabitants. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 1. Iberus, now the Ebru, rises in the north of Spain, in the country of the ancient Cantabn, 
 and flows with a south-eastern course into the Mediterranean sea. Before the second Punic 
 war this river formed the boundary between the Roman and Carthaginian territories ; and, in 
 the time of Charlemagne, between the Moorish and Christian dominions. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. Catalonia is the name by which the north-eastern part of Spain has long been known, and 
 it is now a province of modern Spain. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 3. Gaul embraced nearly the same territory as modern France. When first known it was 
 divided among the three great nations of the Bclgce, the Celts, and the Aquitani, but the 
 Romans called all the inhabitants Gauls, while the Greeks called them Celts. The Celts proper 
 inhabited the north-western part of the country, the Belgse the north-eastern and eastern, and 
 the Aquitani the south-western. The divisions by which Gaul is best known in ancient history 
 are Lugdunensis, Belgica, Aquitania, and Narbonensis, called the "Four Gauls," which were 
 established by the Romans after the conquest of the country by Julius Cfesar. As far back as 
 we can penetrate into the history of western Europe, the Gallic or Celtic race occupied nearly 
 all Gaul, together with the two great islands north-west of the country, one of which, (England 
 and Scotland) they called Alb-in, " White Island," and the other (Ireland) they called Er-in 
 " Isle of (he West." (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 4. Marseilles, anciently called Massila, was originally settled by a Greek colony from 
 Phocis. It is now a large commercial city, and sea port of the Mediterranean, situated in a 
 beautiful plain on the east side of the bay of the Gulf of Lyons. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 5. Turin, called by the Romans J)ugusta Taurinorutn, now a large city of north-western 
 Italy, is situated on the northern or western side of the river Po, eighty miles south-west of 
 Milan. (Map No. VIII.)
 
 158 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAUT I 
 
 his progress. In a partial encounter on the Ticmus 1 the Roman 
 cavalry was beaten by the Spanish and Numidian horsemen, 3 and 
 Scipio, who had been severely wounded, retreated across the Po 3 to 
 await the arrival of Sempronius and his army. Soon after, the 
 entire Roman army was defeated on fhe left bank of the Trebia, 4 
 when the hesitating Gauls at once espoused the cause of the victors. 
 (218 B. C.) 
 
 1G. In the following year Hannibal advanced towards Rome, and 
 Sempronius, falling into an ambuscade near Lake Trasimenus, 5 was 
 slain, and his whole army cut to pieces. (217 B. C.) In another 
 campaign, Hannibal, after passing Rome, and penetrating into 
 southern Italy, having increased his army to fifty thousand men, de- 
 feated the consuls JSmilios and Varro in a great battle at Cannae.* 
 (216 B. C.) The Romans, whose numbers exceeded those of the 
 enemy, lost, in killed alone, according to the .lowest calculation, more 
 than forty-two thousand men. Among the slain was ^Emilius, one 
 of the consuls. 
 
 17. The calamity which had befallen Rome at Cannje shook the 
 allegiance of some of her Italian subjects, and the faith of her 
 allies; many of the Grecian cities, hoping to recover their inde- 
 pendence, made terms with the victors ; Syracuse deserted the cause 
 of Rome ; and Philip of Mac' edon sent an embassy to Italy and 
 formed an alliance with Hannibal. (See p. 109.) But the Romans 
 did not despond. They made the most vigorous preparations to 
 carry on the war in Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, and Africa, as well as 
 in Italy : they formed an alliance with the Grecian States of .ZEtolia, 
 and thus found sufficient employment for Philip at home, and in the 
 
 1. The Ticinus, now Ticino, eaters the Po from the north about twenty miles south-west 
 from Milan. Near its junction with the Po stood the ancient city of Ticinum, now called 
 Pavia. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 2. JVumidia was a country of northern Africa, adjoining the Carthaginian territory on the 
 west, and embracing the eastern part of the territory of modern Algiers. (Map No. IX.) 
 
 3. The river Po, the Erid' anus or Padus of the ancients, rises in the Alps, on the confines 
 tf France ; and, flowing eastward, receives during its long course to the Adriat' ic, a vast num- 
 ber of tributary streams. It divides the great plain of Lombardy into two nearly equal parts. 
 (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 4. The Trebia is a southern tributary of the Po, which enters that stream near the modern 
 city of Piazenza, (anciently called Placentia) thirty-five miles south-east from Milan. (Map 
 No. VIII.) 
 
 5. Lake Trasimtnus, (now called Perugia,) was in Etruria, near the Tiber, eighty miles 
 north from Rome. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 6. Canute, an ancient city of Apulia, was situated near the river Aufidus (now Ofanto) five 
 or six miles from the Adriat' ic. The scene of the great battle between the Romans and Cartha- 
 ginians is marked by the name of campo di sangue, " field of blood ;" and spears, heads of 
 lances, and other pieces of armor, slill continue to be turned up by the plough. (Map No. VIII.)
 
 CHAP'.V.] ROMAN HISTORY. 159 
 
 end reduced him to the humilating necessity of making a separate 
 peace. 
 
 1 8. From the field of Cannse Hannibal led his forces to Cap' ua, 
 which at once opened its gates to receive him, but his veterans were 
 enervated by the luxuries and debaucheries of that licentious city. 
 [n the meantime Fabius Maximus had been appointed to the com- 
 mand of the Roman army in Italy, and by a new and cautious system 
 of tactics by avoiding decisive battles by watching the motions 
 of the enemy, harassing their march, and intercepting their con- 
 voys, he gradually wasted the strength of Hannibal, who at length 
 summoned to his assistance his .brother Has' drubal, who had been 
 contending with the Scipios in Spain. Has' drubal crossed the 
 Pyrenees and the Alps with little opposition, but on the banks of 
 the Metaurus 1 he was entrapped by the consuls Livius and Nero, 
 his whole army was cut to pieces, and he himself was slain. (B. C. 
 207.) His gory head, thrown into the camp of Hannibal, gave the 
 latter the first intelligence of this great misfortune. Before this 
 event the ancient city of Syracuse had been taken by storm by the 
 .Homans, after the siege had been a long time protracted by the me- 
 chanical skill of the famous Archimedes. a 
 
 19. At length the youthful Cornelius Scipio, the son of Publius 
 Scipio, having driven the Carthaginians from Spain, and being 
 elected consul, -gained the consent of the senate to carry the war 
 into Africa, although this bold measure was opposed by the age and 
 experience of the great Fabius. Soon after the landing of Scipio 
 near Utica," Massinis' sa, king of the Numidians, who had previously 
 
 1. The Jlfetaurus, now the Metro, was a river of Umbria, which flowed into the Adriat' ic. 
 The battle was fought on the left bank of the river, at a place now occupied by the village of 
 Fossombrone. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 2. The city of Utica stood on the banks of the river Bagrada, (now the Afejerdak.) a few 
 miles north-west from Carthage. Its ruins are to be seen at the present day near the port of 
 Farina. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 a. Archimedes, the most celebrated mathematician among the ancients, was a native of Syra- 
 cuse. He was highly skilled in astronomy, mechanics, geometry, hydrostatics, and optics, in 
 all of which he produced many extraordinary inventions. His knowledge of the principle of 
 specific gravities enabled him to detect the fraudulent mixture of silver in the golden crown of 
 Hiero, king of Syracuse, by comparing the quantity of water displaced by equal weights of 
 gold and silver. The thought occurred to him upon observing, while he was in the bath, that 
 he displaced a bulk of water equal to his own body. He was so highly excited by the dis- 
 covery, that he is said to have run naked out of the bath into the street, exclaiming eureka 1 
 " I have found it." His -acquaintance with the power of the lever is evinced by his famous 
 declaration to Hiero : "Give me where I ma-- itand, and I will move the world." At the time 
 of the siege of Syracuse he is said to havs fired the Roman fleet by means of immense reflect- 
 ing mirrors.
 
 160 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART! 
 
 been in alliance with the Carthaginians, went over to the Romans, 
 and aided in surprising and burning the Carthaginian camp of Has'- 
 drubal, still another general of that name. Both Tunis and Utica 
 were next besieged ; the former soon opened its gates to the Romans, 
 and the Carthaginian senate, in despair, recalled Hannibal from 
 Italy, for the defence of the city. (202 B. C.) 
 
 20. Peace, which Hannibal himself advised, might even now have 
 been made on terms honorable to Carthage, had not the Carthagi- 
 nians, elated by the presence of their favorite hero, and confident 
 of his success, obstinately resisted any concession. Both generals 
 made preparations for a decisive -engagement, and the two armies 
 met on the plains of Zarna; 1 but the forces of Hannibal were mostly 
 raw troops, while those of Scipio were the disciplined legions that 
 had so often conquered in Spain. Hannibal showed himself worthy 
 of his former fame ; but after a hard-fought battle the Romans pre- 
 vailed, and Carthage lost the army which was her only reliance. 
 Peace was then concluded on terms dictated by the conqueror. Car- 
 thage consented to confine herself to her African possessions, to keep 
 no elephants in future for purposes of war, to give up all prisoners 
 and deserters, to reduce her navy to ten small vessels, to undertake 
 no war without the consent of the Romans, and to pay ten thousand 
 talents of silver. (202 B. C.) Scipio, on his return home, received 
 the title of Africanus, and was honored with the most magnificent 
 triumph that had ever been exhibited at Rome. 
 
 21. The second Punic war had brought even greater distress upon 
 the Roman people than upon the Carthaginians, for during the six- 
 teen years of Hannibal's occupation of Italy the greater part of the 
 Roman territory had lain waste, and was plundered of its wealth, 
 and deserted by its people ; and famine had often threatened Rome 
 itself; while the number of the Roman militia on the rolls had 
 been reduced by desertion, and the sword of the enemy, from two 
 hundred and seventy thousand nearly to the half of that number. 
 Yet in their greatest adversity the Roman people had never given 
 way to despair, nor shown the smallest humiliation at defeat, nor 
 manifested the least design of concession.; and when the pressure of 
 war was removed, this same unconquerable spirit rapidly raised 
 Rome to a state of prosperity and greatness which she had never at- 
 tained before. 
 
 1. The city of Zama, the site of which is occupied by the modern village of Zincarin, v/ni 
 about a hundred miles southwest from Carthage. (Map No. VIII.)
 
 CHAP. V.] ROM ATS' HISTORY. 161 
 
 22. The si ate of the world was now highly favorable for the ad- 
 vancement of a great military republic, like that of Rome, to univer- 
 sal dominion. In the East, the kingdoms formed from the fragments 
 of Alexander's mighty empire were either still engaged in mutual 
 wars, or had sunk into the weakness of exhausted energies; the 
 Grecian States were divided among themselves, each being ready to 
 throw itself upon foreign protection to promote its own immediate 
 interests ; while in the West the Romans were masters of Spain ; 
 their colonies were rapidly encroaching on the Gallic provinces ; and 
 they had tributaries among the nations of Northern Africa. 
 
 23. The war with Carthage had scarcely ended when an embassy 
 from Athens solicited the protection of the Romans against the power 
 of Philip II. of Mac' edon ; and war being unhesitatingly V i. A GRE- 
 declared against Philip, Roman diplomacy was at once CIAN WAR - 
 plunged into the maze of Grecian politics. (B. C. 201.) After a 
 war of four years Philip was defeated in the decisive battle of 
 Cynoceph' alse, (B. C. 197,) and forced to submit to such terms as 
 the conquerors pleased to dictate ; and at the Isthmian games the 
 Greeks received with gratitude the declaration of their freedom under 
 the protection of Rome. When, therefore, a few years later, the 
 .ZEtolians, dissatisfied with the Roman policy, invited Antiochus of 
 Syria into Europe, and that monarch had made himself master of 
 Euboe'a, a plausible pretext was again offered for Roman inter- 
 ference : and when the .ZEtolians had been reduced, Antiochus driven 
 back, and Greece tranquillized upon Roman terms, an Asiatic war 
 was open to the cupidity of the Romans. 
 
 24. After a brief struggle, Antiochus, completely overthrown in 
 the general battle of Magnesia, 1 (B. C. 191,) purchased a peace by 
 surrendering to the Romans all those portions of Asia V n. SYRIAN 
 Minor bounded on the east by Bithyn'ia, Galatia, Cap- WAR - 
 padocia, and Cilic'ia, a pledging himself not to interfere in the affairs 
 of the Roman allies in Europe giving up his ships of war, and 
 paying fifteen thousand talents of silver. The Romans now erected 
 the conquered provinces, with the exception of a few Greek maritime 
 towns, into a kingdom which they conferred upon Eumenes, their 
 
 1. Magnesia, (now Manisa,') a city of Lydia, was situated on the southern side of the river 
 Hermus, (now Kodus,) twenty-eight miles north-east from Smyrna. The modern Manisa ia 
 one of the neatest towns of Asia Minor, and contains a population of about thirty thousand 
 inhabitants. The) e was another Magnesia, now in ruins, fifty miles south-east from Smyrna. 
 'Map No. IV.) 
 
 a. See Map of Asia Minor, No. VL 
 11
 
 162 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAET L 
 
 ally, a petty prince of Per' gamus, 1 while to the Rhodians, also their 
 allies, they gave the provinces of Lye' ia and Caria. a 
 
 25. Soon after the close of the second Punic war, Hannibal, 
 having incurred the enmity of some of his countrymen, retired to 
 Syria, where he joined Antiochus in the war against Rome. A clause 
 in the treaty with the Syrian monarch stipulated that Hannibal 
 should be delivered up to the Romans ; but he avoided the danger 
 by seeking refuge at the court of Prusias, king of Bithyn' ia, where 
 he remained about five years. An embassy was finally sent to de- 
 mand him of Priisias, who, afraid of giving offence to the Romans, 
 agreed to give him up, but the aged veteran, to avoid falling into the 
 hands of his ungenerous enemies, destroyed himself by poison, in the 
 sixty-fifth year of his age. The same year witnessed the death of 
 his great rival and conqueror Scipio. (B. C. 183.) b The latter, 
 on his return from carrying on the war against Antiochus, was 
 charged with secreting part of the treasure received from the Syrian 
 king. Scorning to answer the unjust accusation, he went as an exile 
 into a country village of Italy, where he soon after died. 
 
 26. The events that led to the overthrow of the Macedonian 
 monarchy, and the reduction of Greece to a Roman province, have 
 
 vin. THIRD been related in a former chapter. Already the third 
 PUNIC WAR. Punic war was drawing to a close, and the same year 
 that Greece lost her liberties under Roman dominion, witnessed the 
 destruction of the miserable remains of the once proud republic of 
 Carthage. During the fifty years that had elapsed since the battle 
 of Zama, the conduct of the Carthaginians had not afforded the Ro- 
 mans any cause whatever for complaint, and amicable relations be- 
 tween the two people might still have continued ; but the expediency 
 of a war with Carthage was a favorite topic of debate in the Roman 
 senate, and it is said that, of the many speeches which the elder Cato 
 made on this subject, all ended with the sentence, delenda cst Car- 
 thago, " Carthage must be destroyed." 
 
 27. Carthage, still a wealthy, but feeble city, had long been har- 
 assed by the encroachments of Massinis' sa, king of Numid' ia, who 
 
 1. The t yr' gamus here mentioned, the most important city of Mysia, was situated in the 
 southern part of that country, in a plain watered by two small rivers which united to form th* 
 Caicus. (Map No. IV.) 
 
 a. See Map of Asia Minor, No. VI. 
 
 b. Some of the ancients placed the death of Hannibal one or two years later. The dates of 
 Scipio's death vary from 183 t 187 
 
 c. See p. 110.
 
 CHAP. V.J ROMAIS T HISTORY. 163 
 
 appears to have been instigated to hostile acts by the Romans ; and 
 although Massinis' sa had wrested from Carthage a large portion of 
 her territory, yet the Romans, seeking a pretext for war, called Car- 
 thage to account for her conduct, and without waiting to listen to 
 expostulation or submission, sent an army of more than eighty 
 thousand men to Sicily, to be there got in readiness for a descent 
 upon the African coast. -(149 B. C.) At Sicily the Carthaginan 
 ambassadors were received by the consuls in command of the army, and 
 required to give up three hundred children of the noblest Carthaginian 
 families as hostages; and when this demand had been complied with 
 the army crossed over and landed near Carthage. The Carthagi- 
 nians were now told that they must deliver up all their arms and 
 munitions of war ; and, hard as this command was, it was obeyed.* 
 The perfidious Romans next demanded that the Carthaginians should 
 abandon their city, allow its walls to be demolished, and remove to 
 a place ten miles inland, where they might build a new city, but 
 without walls or fortifications. 
 
 28. When these terms were made known to the Carthaginian 
 senate, the people, exasperated to madness, immediately put to death 
 all the Romans who were in the city, closed the gates, and, for want 
 of other weapons, collected stones on the battlements to repel the 
 first attacks of the enemy. Hasdrubal, who had been banished be- 
 cause he was an enemy of the Romans, was recalled, and unexampled 
 exertions made for defence : the brass and iron of domestic utensils 
 were manufactured into weapons of war, and the women cut off their 
 long hair to be converted into strings for the bowmen and cordage 
 for the shipping. 
 
 29. The Romans had not anticipated such a display of courage 
 and patriotism, and the war was prolonged until the fourth year 
 after its commencement. It was the struggle of despair on the part 
 of Carthage, and could end only in her destruction. The city was 
 finally taken by Scipio JEmilianus, the adopted son of the great 
 Africanus, when only five thousand citizens were found within its 
 walls, fifty thousand having previously surrendered on different occa- 
 sions, and been carried away into slavery. Hasdrubal begged his 
 life, which was granted only that he might adorn the triumph of 
 the Roman general ; but his wife, reproaching him for his cowardice, 
 threw herself with her children into the flames of the temple in 
 
 a. " Roman commissioners were sent into the city, who carried away two thousand cata- 
 pults, and two hundred thousand suits of armor."
 
 164 ANCIENT HJSTORY. [PAKT L 
 
 which she had taken refuge. The walls of Carthage were levelled 
 to the ground, the buildings of the city were burned, a part of the 
 Carthaginian territory was given to the king of Numid' ia, and the 
 rest became a Roman province. (146 B. C.) Thus perished the 
 republic of Carthage, after an existence of nearly eight hundred 
 years, like Greece, the victim of Roman ambition. 
 
 We give below a description of Jerusalem, which was omitted by mistake in its proper 
 place. 
 
 Jerusalem, a famous city of southern Palestine, and long the capital of the kingdom of 
 J'.idah, is situated on a hill in a mountainous country, between two small vaJioyh, in one of 
 which, on the west, the brook Gihon runs with a south-eastern course, to joia the brook 
 Kedrou in the uanow valley of Jehoshaphat, east of the city. The modern city, built about 
 three hundred years ago, is entirely surrounded by walls, barely two and a-half miles in 
 circuit, and flanked here and there with square towers. The boundaries of the old city varied 
 greatly at different times ; and they are so imperfectly marked, the walls having been wholly 
 destroyed, that few facts can be gathered respecting them. The interior of the modern city is 
 divided by two valleys, intersecting each other at right angles, into four hills, on which history, 
 sacred and profane, has stampi-d the imperishable names of Zion, Acra, Bezeiha, and Moriah. 
 Mount Zion, on the south-west, the " City of David," is now the Jewish and Armenian quarter : 
 Acra, or the lower city, on the north-west, is the Christian quarter; while the Mosque of Omar, 
 with it sacred enclosure, occupies the hill of Moriah, which was crowned by the House of the 
 Lord built by Solomon. West of the Christian quarter of the city is Mount Calvary, the scene 
 of the Saviour's crucifixion ; and on the eastern side of the valley of Jehoshaphat is the Mount 
 of Olives, on whuse western slope are the gardens of Gelhsemane, enclosed by a wall, and still 
 in a sort of ruined cultivation. A little west of Mount Zion, and near the base of Mount Cal- 
 vary, is the pool of Gihon, near which ''Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anointed 
 Solomon king over Israel." South of Mount Zion is the valley of Hiunom, watered by the 
 brook Gihon. A short distance up the valley of Jehoshaphat, and issuing from beneath the 
 walls of Mount Moriah, is 
 
 " Siloa's brook, that flow'd 
 Fast by the oracles of God." 
 
 Jerusalem and its suburbs abound with many interesting localities, well authenticated as the 
 Bcenes of events connected with the history of the patriarchs, and the sufferings of Christ ; but 
 to hundreds of others shown by the monks, minute criticism denies any claims to our respect. 
 Considered as a modern town, the city is of very little importance : its population is about ten 
 thousand, two-thirds of whom are Mohammedans : it has no trade no industry whatever 
 nothing to give it commercial importance, except the manufacture, by the monks, of sheila, 
 beads, and relic*, large quantities of which are shipped from the port of Jaffa, for Italy, Spain, 
 and Portugal. 
 
 Jerusalem is generally believed to be identical with the Salem of which Melchisedek was 
 king in the time of Abraham. When the Israelites entered the Holy Land it was in the 
 possession of the Jebusiles; and although Joshua took the city, the citadel on Mouct Zion was 
 held by the Jebusites until they were dislodged by Dav.d, who made Jerusalem Ihe mttropolii 
 o: his kingdom.
 
 CHAP. VL1 ROMAN HISTORY. 165 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ROMAN HISTORY: 
 
 F1OM THE CONQUEST OF GREECE AND CARTHAGE, 146 B. 0, TO THEj 
 COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. Situation of SPAIN AFTER THE FALL OF CARTHAOK. [Celtiberians. Lusi 
 Unians.] 2. Character, exploits, and death of Viriathus, 3. Subsequent history of the Lusiti- 
 nians. War with the Nuraan' tians. [Numau' tia,] 4. SERVILE WAR IN SICILY. Situation of 
 Sicily. Events of the Servile war. 5. DISSENSIONS OF THE GRACCHI. Corrupt state of society 
 at Rome. 6. Country and city population. 7. Efforts of the tribunes. Character and efforts 
 of Tiberius Gracchus. Condition of the public lands. 8. The agrarian laws proposed by 
 Tiberius. 9. Opposed by the nobles, but finally passed. Triumvirate appointed to enforce 
 them. Disposition of the treasures of At' talus. 10. Circumstances of the death of Tiberius. 
 11. Continued opposition of the aristocracy tribuneship of Caius Gracchus and circumstances 
 of his death. 12. Condition of Rome after the fall of the Gracchi. 13. Profligacy of the Ro- 
 man senate, and circumstances of the first JUGURTHINE WAR. 14. Renewal of the war with 
 Jugurtha. Events of the war, and fate of Jugurtha. [Mauritania.] 15. GERMANIC INVASION. 
 [Cimbri and Teu' tones.] Successive Roman defeats. [Danube. Noreja.] 16. Marius, ap- 
 pointed to the command, defeats the Teu' tones. [The Rhone. Aix.] 17. The Cimbri. Great- 
 ness of the danger with which Rome was threatened. 18. THE SOCIAL WAR. 19. FIRST 
 MITIIRIDATIC WAR. [Pontus. Eu' menes. Per' gamus.] 20. Causes of the Mithridatic war, 
 and successes of Mithridates. CIVIL WAR BETWEEN MA' RIUS AND SYLLA. 22. Triumph of 
 the Marian faction. Death and character of Marius. 23. Continuance of the civil war. 
 Events in the East. Sylla master of Rome. 23. Proscription and massacres. Death of Sylla. 
 25. The Marian faction in Spain. SERVILE WAR IN ITALY. 
 
 26. SECOND AND THIRD MITHRIDATIC WARS. Lucullus. Manil' ius, and the Manil ian 
 law. 27. Pompey's successes in the East. Reduction of Palestine. Death of Mithridates. 28. 
 CONSPIRACY OF CATILINE. Situation of Rome at this period. Character and designs of Catiline. 
 Circumstances that favored his schemes. By whom opposed. 29. Cicero elected consul. 
 Flight, defeat, and death of Catiline. 30. THE FIRST TRIUMVIRATE. Division of power. 31. 
 Caesar's conquests in Gaul, Germany, and Britain. Death of Crassus. Rivalry between Caesar 
 and Pompey. [The Rhine. Parthia.] 32. Commencement of the CIVIL WAR BETWEEN CJESAR 
 AND POMPEY. Flight of the latter. [Raven' na.] 33. Caesar's successes. Sole dictator. His 
 defeat at DyrracV him. 34. Battle of Pharsalia. Flight, and death of Pompey. [Pharsalia. 
 Peleu' sium.] 35. Cleopatra. Alexandrine war. Reduction of Pontus. [Pharos.] 30. Caesar's 
 clemency. Servility of the senate. The war in Africa, and death of Cato. [Thapsns.] 37. 
 Honors bestowed upon Cansar. Useful changes reformation of the calendar. 38. The war in 
 Spain. [Munda.] 39. Caesar, dictator for life. His gigantic projects. He is suspected of 
 aiming at sovereign power. 40. Conspiracy against him. His death. 41. Conduct of Brutus. 
 Mark Antony's oration. 1U effects. 42. Ambition of Antony. Civil war. SECOND TRIUMVI- 
 RATE. The proscription that followed. 43. Brutus and Cassius. Their defeat at PhilippL 
 [Philippi.] 44. Antony in Asia Minor, at the court of Cleopatra. [Tarsus.] Civil war in 
 Italy. 45. Antony's return. Reconciliation of the rivals, and division of the empire among 
 them. [Brundusium.] 40. The peace is soon broken. Sexti us Pompey. Lep'idus. Antony. 
 47. The war between Octavius and Antony. Battle of Actium, and disgraceful flight of 
 Antony. 48. Death of Antony and Cleopatra. 49. OCTA' vitrs SOLE MASTER OF THE ROMAN 
 WORLD. Honors and offices conferred upon him. Character of his government. 50. Success. 
 ful wars, folio wed by a general peace. Extent of the R;man empire. Birth of the Saviour.
 
 166 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART L 
 
 1. AFTER, the fall of Carthage and the Grecian republics, wl,ich 
 were the closing events of the preceding chapter, the attention of 
 the Roman people was for a time principally directed to Spain. 
 
 When, near the close of the second Punic war, the Car- 
 
 I SPA1X 
 
 AFTER THE tliaginian dominion in Spain ended, that country was re- 
 
 FALL OF garded as being under Roman jurisdiction ; although, 
 
 beyond the immediate vicinity of the Roman garrisons, 
 
 the native tribes, the most prominent of which were the Celtiberians 1 
 
 and Lusitaniaus, 2 long maintained their independence. 
 
 2. At the close of the third Punic war, Viriathus, a Lusitanian 
 prince, whose character resembles that of the Wallace of Scotland, 
 had triumphed over the Roman legions in several engagements, and 
 had already deprived the republic of nearly half of her possessions in 
 the peninsula. During eight years he bade defiance to the most for- 
 midable hosts, and foiled the ablest generals of Rome, when the 
 Roman governor Gee' pio, unable to cope with so great a general, 
 treacherously procured his assassination. a (B. C. 140.) 
 
 3. Soon after the death of Viriathus the Lusitanians submitted to 
 a peace, and many of them were removed from their mountain fast- 
 nesses to the mild district of Valen' cia, 3 where they completely lost 
 their warlike character; but the Numan'tians 4 rejected with scorn 
 the insidious overtures of their invaders, and continued the war. 
 Two Roman generals, at the head of large armies, were conquered 
 by them, and on both occasions treaties of peace were concluded 
 with the vanquished, in the name of the Roman people, but after- 
 
 1. The Celtibtrians, whose country was sometimes called Celtiberia, occupied the greatest part 
 of the interior of Spain around the head waters of the Tagua. 
 
 2. The Lusitanians, whose country was called JMsit&nia, dwelt on the Atlantic coast, and 
 when first known, principally between the rivers Douro and Tagus. 
 
 3. The modern district or province of Valencia extends about two hundred miles along the 
 south-eastern coast of Spain. The city of Valencia, situated near the mouth of the river 
 Guadalaviar, (the ancient Tusia,) is its capital. {Map No. XIII.) 
 
 4. Numari tia, a celebrated town of the Celtiberiaus, was situated near the source of the 
 river Douro, and near the site of the modern village of Ckavaler, and about one hundred and 
 twenty-five miles north-east from Madrid. 
 
 a. Vir&thus, at first a shepherd, called by the Romans a robber, then a guerilla chief, and 
 finally an eminent military hero, aroused the Lusitanians to avenge the wrongs and injuries in- 
 flicted upon them by Roman ambition. He was unrivalled in fertility of resources under defeat, 
 skill in the conduct of his troops, and courage in the hour of battle. Accustomed to a free 
 life in the mountains, he never indulged himself with the luxury of a bed : bread and meat 
 were his only fo>d, and water his only beverage; and being robust,, hardy, adroit, always 
 cheerful, and dreading no danger, he knew how to avail himself of the wild chivalry of his 
 countrymen, and to keep alive in them the spirit of freedom. During eight years he constantly 
 Harassed the Roman armies, and defeated many Roman generals, sererul of whom lost their 
 lives in battle. His name still lives in the songs and legends of early Spain.
 
 CHAP. VI.1 ROMAN HISTORY. 167 
 
 J f 
 
 wards rejected by the Roman senate. Scip' io .ZEmilianus, at the 
 head of sixty thousand men, was then sent to conduct the war, and 
 laying siege to Numan' tia, garrisoned by less than ten thousand 
 men, he finally reduced the city, but not until the Numan' tians, 
 worn out by toil and famine, and finally yielding to despair, had de- 
 stroyed all their women and children, and then, setting fire to their 
 city, had perished, almost to a man, on their own swords, or in the 
 flames. (B. C. 133.) The destruction of Numan' tia was followed 
 by the submission of nearly all the tribes of the peninsula, and Spain 
 henceforth became a Roman province. 
 
 4. Two years before the fall of Numan' tia, Sicily had become the 
 theatre of a servile war, which merits attention principally on ac- 
 count of the view it gives of the state of the conquered countries 
 then under the jurisdiction of Rome. The calamities which usually 
 follow in the train of long-continued war had swept away n> SERVIIjE 
 most of the original population of Sicily, and a large WAR - 
 portion of the cultivated lands in the island had been added, by COL- 
 quest, to the Roman public domain, which had been formed int" 
 large estates, and let out to speculators, who paid rents for the same 
 into the Roman treasury. In the wars of the Romans, and indeed 
 of most nations at this period, large numbers of the captives taker 
 in war were sold as slaves ; and it was by slave labor the estates it 
 Sicily were cultivated. The slaves in Sicily were cruelly treated, 
 and as most of them had once been free, and some of high rank, it 
 is not surprising that they should seek every favorable opportunity 
 to rise against their masters. When once, therefore, a revolt had 
 broken out, it spread rapidly over the whole island. Seventy thou 
 sand of the slaves were at one time under arms, and in four success- 
 ive campaigns four Roman praetorian armies were defeated. The 
 most frightful atrocities were perpetrated on both sides, but the re- 
 bellion was finally quelled by the destruction of most of those who 
 had taken part in it. (B. C. 133.) 
 
 5. While these events were occuring in the Roman provinces, af- 
 fairs in the capital, generally known in history as the " dissensions 
 
 of the Gracchi," were fast ripening for civil war. More 
 
 IIL DISSEN- 
 
 than two hundred years had elapsed since the ammosi- 6IONS OF 
 
 ties of patricians and plebeians were extinguished by an THE 
 equal participation in public honors ; but the wealth of 
 conquered provinces, and the numerous lucrative and honorable 
 offices, both civil and military, that had been created, had produced
 
 J68 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAHT L 
 
 corruption at home, by giving rise to factions which contended for 
 the greatest share of the spoils, while, apart from these, new dis- 
 tinctions had arisen, and the rich and the poor, or the illustrious and 
 the obscure, now formed the great parties in the State. 
 
 6. As the nobles availed themselves of the advantages of their 
 station to accumulate wealth and additional honors, the large slave 
 plantations increased in the country to the disparagement of free 
 labor, and the detriment of small landholders, whose numbers were 
 constantly diminishing, while the city gradually became crowded 
 with an idle, indigent, and turbulent populace, attracted thither by 
 the frequent cheap or gratuitous distributions of corn, and by the 
 frequency of the public shows, and made up, in part, of emancipated 
 slaves, who were kept as retainers in the families of their former 
 masters. So long as large portions of Italy remained unsettled, 
 there was an outlet for the redundancy of this growing populace ; but 
 the entire Italian territory being now occupied, the indigent could 
 no longer be provided for in the country, and the practice of colo- 
 nizing distant provinces had not yet been adopted. 
 
 7. The evils of such a state of society were numerous and for- 
 midable, and such as to threaten the stability of the republic. 
 Against the increasing political influence of the aristocracy, the 
 tribunes of the people had long struggled, but rather as factious 
 demagogues than as honest defenders of popular rights. At length 
 Tiberius Grac' chus, a tribune, and grandson of Scipio Africanus, 
 one of the noblest and most virtuous among the young men of his 
 time, commenced the work of reform by proposing to enforce the 
 Licinian law, which declared that no individual should possess more 
 than five hundred jugers, a (about two hundred and seventy-five acres) 
 of the public domain. This law had been long neglected, so that 
 numbers of the aristocracy now cultivated vast estates, the occupancy 
 of which had perhaps been transmitted from father to son as an in- 
 heritance, or disposed of by purchase and sale ; and although the 
 republic still retained the fee simple in such lands, and could at any 
 time legally turn out the occupants, it had long ceased to be thought 
 probable that its rights would ever be exercised. 
 
 8. The law of Tiberius Grrac' chus went even beyond strict legal jus- 
 tice, by proposing that buildings and improvements on the public lands 
 should be paid for out of the public treasury. The impression has 
 generally prevailed that the Agrarian laws proposed by Tibt>riu3 
 
 a. A juffcr was nearly five-ninths of our acre.
 
 CHAP. VI] ROHAX HISTORY. 169 
 
 Grac'chus were a dhect and violent infringement of the rights of 
 private property ; but the genius and learning of Niebuhr have 
 shown that they effected the distribution of public lands only, and 
 not those of private citizens ; although there were doubtless instances 
 where, incidentally, they violated private rights. 
 
 9. When the senators and nobles, who were the- principal land- 
 holders, perceived that their interests were attacked, their exaspera- 
 tion was extreme ; and Tiberius, whose virtues had hitherto been ac- 
 knowledged by all, was denounced as a factious demagogue, a disturber 
 of the public tranquillity, and a traitor to the conservative interests 
 of the republic. When the law of Tiberius was about to be put to 
 the vote in the assemblies yf the people, the corrupt nobles engaged 
 Octavius, one of the tribune's colleagues, to forbid the proceedings ; 
 but the people deposed him from the tribuneship, and the agrarian 
 law was passed. A permanent triumvirate, or committee of three, 
 consisting of Tiberius Grac' chus, his brother Caius, and Ap' pius 
 Clau' dius, was then appointed to enforce the law. About the same 
 time a law was passed, providing that the treasures which At' talus, 
 king of Per' gamus, had recently bequeathed to the Roman people, 
 should be distributed among the poorer citizens, to whom lands were 
 to be assigned, in order to afford them the means of purchasing the 
 necessary implements of husbandry. 11 
 
 10. At the expiration of the year of his tribuneship, Tiberius 
 offered himself for reelection, conscious that unless shielded by the 
 sacredness of the office of tribune, his person would no longer be 
 safe from the resentment of his enemies. After two of the tribes 
 had voted in his favor, the opposing party declared the votes illegal, 
 and the disputes which followed occupied the day. On the following 
 morning the people again assembled to the election, when a rumor 
 was circulated that some of the nobles, accompanied by bands of 
 armed retainers, designed to attack the crowd and take the life of 
 Tiberius. A tumult ensued, and a false report was carried to the 
 senate, then in session, that Tiberius had demanded a crown of the 
 people. The senate seized upon this pretext for violent interference ; 
 but when the consul refused to disturb the people in their legal as- 
 sembly, the senators rose in a body, and, headed by Scip' io Nasica, 
 
 a. In 133 B. C. At' talus Phikmieter bequeathed his kingdom and all his treasures to the Ro- 
 man people. At' talus was one of the worst specimens of Eastern despots, and took great 
 delight in dispatchir.g his nearest relatives by poison. The Romans had long looked ujon 
 bis kingdom as their property, and his will was probably drawn up by Roman dictation. 
 
 H
 
 170 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAKT I 
 
 and accompanied by a crowd of armed dependants, proceeded to the 
 assembly, where a conflict ensued, in which Tiberius and about three 
 hundred of his adherents were slain. (B. C. 132.) 
 
 1 1. Notwithstanding this disgraceful victory, and the persecutions 
 that followed it, the. ruling party could not abolish the triumvirate 
 which had been appointed to execute the law of Tiberius. During 
 ten years, however, little was accomplished by the popular party, 
 owing to the powerful opposition of the aristocracy ; but after Caiua 
 Grac' chus, a younger brother of Tiberius, had been elected tribune, 
 the cause of the people received a new impulse ; an equitable division 
 of the public lands was commenced, and many salutary reforms were 
 made in the administration of the government. But, at length, 
 Caius being deprived of the tribuneship by false returns and bribery, 
 and his bitter enemy Opirn' ius having been elected consul by the 
 aristocratic faction, and afterwards appointed dictator by the senate, 
 the followers of Caius were driven from the city by armed violence, 
 and three thousand of their number slain. (B. G. 120.) The head 
 of Caius was thrown at the feet of Opim' ius, who had offered for it 
 a reward of its weight in gold. a 
 
 12. Thus ended what has been termed the " dissensions of the 
 Gracchi;" and with that noble family perished the freedom of the 
 republic. An odious aristocracy, which derived its authority from 
 wealth, now ruled the State : the tribunes, becoming rich themselves, 
 no longer interposed their authority between the people and their 
 oppressors ; while the lower orders, reduced to a state of hopeless 
 subjection, and despairing of liberty, became factious and turbulent, 
 and ere long prepared the way, first for the tyranny of a perpetual 
 dictatorship, and lastly for the establishment of a monarchy on the 
 ruins of the commonwealth. 
 
 13 The profligacy and corruption of the senate were manifest in 
 the events that led to the Jugur' thine war, which began to embroil 
 
 a. Tiberius and Caius Grac chus, though of the noblest origin, and of superior natural en- 
 dowments, are said to have been indebted more to the judicious care of their widowed mother 
 Cornelia, than to nature, for the excellence of their characters. This distinguished Roman 
 matron, the daughter of Scip'io Africanus the Elder, occupies a high rank for the purity and 
 excellence of her private character, as well aa for her noble and elevated sentiments. The fol- 
 lowing anecdote of Cornelia is often cited. A Campanian lady who was at the time on a visit 
 to her, having displayed to Cornelia some very beautiful ornaments which she possessed, de- 
 sired the latter, in return, to exhibit her own. The Roman mother purposely detained her in 
 conversation until her children returned from school, when, pointing to them, she exclaimed, 
 " There are my ornaments." She bore the untimely aeatn of her sons with great magnanimity, 
 ana in honor of her a statue was afterwards erected by the Roman people, bearing for an in 
 acriptiou the words, " d>rne/i'o, mother of the Gracchi.' 1 '
 
 CHAT VL] ROMAN HISTORY. 17' 
 
 the republic soon after the fall of the Grac' chi. The Numid' ian 
 king Micip' sa, the son of Massinis' sa, had divided IV . JUGUE'- 
 his kingdom, on his death-bed, between his two sons THINE WAR. 
 Hiemp' sal and Adher' bal, and his nephew Jugur' tha ; but the 
 latter, resolving to obtain possession of the \vhole inheritance, soon 
 murdered Hiemp' sal, and compelled Adher' bal to take refuge in 
 Rome. The senate, won by the bribes of the usurper, decreed a 
 division of the kingdom between the two claimants, giving to Jugur' tha 
 the better portion ; but the latter soon declared war against his cousin, 
 and, having gained possession of his person, put him to death. The 
 senate could no longer avoid a declaration of war against Jugur' tha; 
 but he would have escaped by an easy peace, after coming to Rome 
 to plead his own cause, had he not there murdered another relative, 
 whom he suspected of aspiring to the throne of Numid' ia. (B. C. 
 109.) 
 
 14. Jugur 'tha was allowed to return to Africa; but his briberies 
 of the Roman senators were exposed, and the war against him was 
 begun anew. After he had defeated several armies, Metel' lus drove 
 him from his kingdom, when the Numid' ian formed an alliance with 
 Bac' chus, king of Mauritania, 1 but their united forces were success- 
 ively routed by the consul Marius, formerly a lieutenant in the army 
 of Metel' lus, but who, after obtaining the consulship, had been sent 
 to terminate the war. Eventually the Moorish king betrayed Jugur'- 
 tha into the hands of the Romans, as the price of his own peace and 
 security, (B. C. 106,) and the captive monarch, after gracing the 
 triumph of Marius, was condemned to be starved to death in prison. 
 
 15. Soon after the fall of Jugur 'tha, Marius was recalled from 
 his command in Africa to defend the northern provinces of Italy 
 against a threatened invasion from immense hordes of the Cim' bri 
 and Ten' tones, a German nations, who, about the year v . GERMANIC 
 113, had crossed the Danube 2 and appeared on the east- INVASION 
 
 1. Ma.urit6.nia was an extensive country of Northern Africa, west of Numid' ia, embracing 
 the present Morocco and part of Algiers. (Map No. IX.) 
 
 2. The Danube, the largest river in Europe, except the Volga, rises in the south-western part 
 of Germany, in the Duchy of Baden, only about thirty miles from the Rhine, and after a general 
 south-eastern course of nearly eighteen hundred miles, falls into the Black Sea. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 a. The barbarian torrent of the dm' bri and Teu' tones appears to have originated beyond 
 the Elbe. The original seat of the Cim' bri was probably the Cimbri.in peninsula, so called by 
 the Romans, the same as the modern Jutland, or Denmark. Opinions differ concerning tha 
 Ten' tones, some believing them to have been the collective wanderers of many tribes between 
 the Vistula and the Elbe, while others Sx their original seats in northern Scandinavia that is, 
 in the north of Sweden and Norway.
 
 172 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAKT L 
 
 ern declivities of the Alps, where the Romans guarded the passes 
 into Italy. The first year of the appearance of these unknown 
 tribes, from which is dated the beginning of German history , a they 
 defeated the Roman consul Papir' ius Car' bo, near Noreja, 1 in the 
 mountains of the present Styr' ia. Proceeding thence towards south- 
 ern Gaul they demanded a country from the Romans, for which they 
 promised military assistance in war ; but when their request was re- 
 fused they determined to obtain by the sword what was denied them 
 by treaty. Four more Roman armies were successively vanquished 
 by them, the last under the consuls Man' lius and Gx' pio in the year 
 105, with the prodigious loss of 80,000 Roman soldiers slain, and 
 40,000 of their slaves. 
 
 16. Fortunately for the Romans, the enemy, after this great vic- 
 tory, turned aside towards the south of France and Spain, while 
 Marius, 'who had been appointed to the command of the northern 
 army, marching over the Alps towards Gaul, formed a defensive 
 camp on the Rhone. 2 The Germans, returning, in vain tempted 
 Marius to battle, after which they divided into two bands, the Cini'- 
 bri taking up their march for Italy, while the Teu' tones remained 
 opposed to Marius. But when the Teu' tones saw that their chal- 
 lenge for battle was not accepted, they also broke up, and marching 
 past the Romans, jeeringly asked them " if they had any commissions 
 to send to their wives." Marius followed at their side, keeping upon 
 the heights, but when he had arrived at the present town of Aix, s in the 
 south, of France, some accidental skirmishing at the outposts of the 
 two armies brought on a general battle, which continued two days, 
 and in which the nation of the' Teu' tones was nearly annihilated, 
 (B. C. 102,) two hundred thousand of them being either killed or 
 taken prisoners. 
 
 17. In the meantime the consul Catul' Ius had been repulsed by 
 the Cim' bri in northern Italy, and driven south of the Po. Marius 
 hastened to his assistance, and their united forces now advanced 
 across the Po, and defeated the Cim' bri in a great battle on the Rau- 
 
 1. Nortja, or JVoreta, was the capital of the Roman province of Noricum. The site of this 
 city is in the present Austrian province of Styria, about sixty miles north-east from Laybach. 
 (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 2. The Rhone rises in Switzerland, passes through the Lake of Geneva, and after uniting 
 with the Saone flows south through the south-eastern part of France, and discharges its water* 
 by four mouths into the Mediterranean. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 3. Mi, called by the Romans rfyua Sen.1^ is situated in a plain sixteen miles north of Mar 
 tie-lies. (JU/ipNo. XIII.) 
 
 a. Kohlrausch's Germany, p. 43
 
 CHAP. VI.] ROMAN HISTORY 173 
 
 dian plains. a (B. C. 101.) Thus ended the war witL the Gorman 
 nations. The danger with which it for a time threatened Rome was 
 compared to that of the great Gallic invasion, nearly three hundred 
 years before. The Romans, in gratitude to their deliverer, now 
 styled Marius the third founder of the city. 
 
 1 8. A still more dangerous war, called the social war, soon after broke 
 out between the Romans and their Italian allies, caused VI THB 
 by the unjust treatment of the latter, who, forming part of SOCIAL WAC. 
 the commonwealth, and sharing its burdens, had long in vain de- 
 manded for themselves the civil and political privileges that were 
 enjoyed by citizens of the metropolis. The war continued three 
 years, and Rome would doubtless have fallen, had she not, soon after 
 the commencement of the struggle, granted the Latin towns, more 
 than fifty in number, all the rights of Roman citizens, and thus se- 
 cured their fidelity. (90 B. C.) b The details of this war are little 
 known, but it is supposed that, during its continuance, more than 
 three hundred thousand Italians lost their lives, and that many 
 flourishing towns were reduced to heaps of ruins. The Romans 
 were eventually compelled to offer the rights of citizenship to all 
 that should lay down their arms ; and tranquillity was thus restored 
 to most of Italy, although the Sainuites continued to resist until 
 they were destroyed as a nation. 
 
 19. While these domestic dangers were threatening Rome, an im- 
 portant African war had broken out with Mithridates, king of Pontus. 1 
 It has been related that in the time of Antiochus the vn FIKST 
 Great, king of Syria, the Romans obtained, by conquest MITHRIDATIC 
 and treaty, the western provinces of Asia Minor, most 
 
 of which they conferred upon one of their allies, Eumenes, king of 
 Per'gamus, and that At' talus, a subsequent prince of Per'gamus, 
 gave back these same provinces, by will, to the Roman people. (See 
 p. 161 and p. 169.) 
 
 iO. The Romans, thus firmly established in Asia Minor, saw with 
 jealousy the increasing power of Mithridates, who, after reducing 
 the nations on the eastern coasts of the Black Sea, had added to his 
 
 1. Pontus was a country of Asia Minor, on the south-eastern coast of the Euxine, having 
 Colchis on the east, and Paphlagonia and Galatia on the west. 
 
 a. The exact locality is unknown, but it was on a northern branch of the Po, between Ver- 
 celli and Verona, probably near the present Milan. Some say near Vercelli, on the west bank 
 of the Sessites. 
 
 b. This was done by the celebrated Lex Julia, or Julian law, proposed by L. Julius Caesar.
 
 174 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART I. 
 
 dominions on the west, Paphlagonia and Cappadocia, a which he 
 claimed by inheritance. Nicomedes, king of Bithyn' ia, disputing 
 with him the right to the latter provinces, appealed to the Roman 
 senate, which declared that the disputed districts should be free 
 States, subject to neither Nicomedes nor Mithridates. The latter 
 then entered into an alliance with Tigranes, king of Armenia, 
 seized the disputed provinces drove Nicomedes from his kingdom 
 defeated two large Roman armies, and, in the year 88, before the 
 end of the social war, had gained possession of all Asia Minor. All 
 the Greek islands of the ^Egean, except Rhodes, voluntarily sub- 
 mitted to him, and nearly all the Grecian States, with Athens, 
 throwing off the Roman yoke, placed themselves under his protection. 
 Mithridates had received a Greek education, and was looked upon 
 as a Grecian, which accounts for the readiness with which the Greeks 
 espoused his cause. 
 
 21. The Roman senate gave the command of the Mithridatic war 
 to Sylla, a man of great intellectual superiority, but of profligate 
 morals, who had served under Marius against Jugur' tha and the 
 
 VIH. CIVIL Cim' bri, and had rendered himself eminent by his ser- 
 WAR BE- vices in the social war. The ambitious Marius. though 
 
 *"*WFKX MA 
 
 aius AND more than twenty years the senior of Sylla, had long 
 SYLLA. regarded the latter as a formidable rival, and now he 
 succeeded in obtaining a decree of the people, by which the com- 
 mand was transferred from Sylla to himself. Sylla, then at the 
 head of an army in the Samnite territory, immediately marched 
 against Rome, and entering the city, broke up the faction of Marius, 
 who, after a series of romantic adventures, escaped to Africa. b 
 (88 B. C.) 
 
 22. Scarcely had Sylla departed with his army for Greece, to carry 
 on the war against Mithridates, when a fierce contest arose within 
 
 a. See Map of Asia Minor, No. IV. 
 
 b. Marius fled first to Ostia, and thence along the sea-coast to Mintur' nae, where he was put 
 on shore, at the mouth of the Liris, and abandoned by the crew of the vessel that carried him. 
 Afler in vain seeking shelter in the cottage of an old peasant, he was forced to hide himself in 
 the mud of the Pontine marshes ; but he was discovered by his vigilant pursuers, dragged out, 
 and thrown into a dungeon at Mintur' nae. No one, however, had the courage to put him to 
 death ; and the magistrates of Mintur' naj therefore sent a public slave into the prison to kill 
 him ; but as the barbarian approached the hoary warrior his courage failed him, and the Min- 
 tur' nians, moved by compassion, put Marius on board a boat and transported him to Africa. 
 Being set down at Carthage, the Roman governor of the district sent to inform him that unless 
 he left Africa he should treat, him as a public enemy. " Go and tell him," replied the wanderer 
 " that you have seen the exile Marius sitting on the ruins of Carthage." In the following year 
 during the absence of Sylla, he re'uined to Italy. For localities of Pontine Marshes, Liris 
 and Mintur' nae, see Map No. X.
 
 CHAP. VI.] ROMA^ HISTORY. 175 
 
 the city between the partisans of Sylla and Marius ; one of the con- 
 suls, Cinna, espousing the cause of the latter, and the other, Octa- 
 vius, that of the former. Cinna recalled the aged Marius ; both 
 parties flew to arms ; and all Italy became a prey to the horrors of 
 civil war. (B. C. 87.) The senate and the nobles adhered to Oct- 
 vius ; but Rome was besieged, and compelled to surrender to the 
 adverse faction. Then commenced a general massacre of all the op- 
 ponents- of Marius, which was continued five days and nights, until 
 the streets ran with blood. Having gratified his revenge by this 
 bloody victory, Marius declared himself consul, without going through 
 the formality of an election, and chose Cinna to be his colleague , 
 but sixteen days later his life was terminated by a sudden fever, at 
 the age of seventy-one years. Marius has the character of having 
 been one of the most successful generals of Rome ; but after having 
 borne away many honorable offices, and performed many noble ex- 
 ploits, he tarnished his glory by a savage and infamous old age. 
 
 23. During three years after the death of Marius, Sylla was con 
 ducting the war in Greece and Asia, while Italy was completely in 
 the hands of the party of Cinna. The latter even sent an army to 
 Asia to attack Sylla, and was preparing to embark himself, when he 
 was slain in a mutiny of his soldiers. In the meantime Sylla, hav- 
 ing taken Athens by storm, and defeated two armies of Mithridates, 
 concluded a peace with that monarch ; (84 B. C.,) and having induced 
 the soldiers sent against him to join his standard, he returned to Italy 
 at the head of thirty thousand men to take vengeance upon his ene- 
 mies, who had collected an army of four hundred and fifty cohorts, 
 numbering one hundred and eighty thousand men, a to oppose him. 
 (B. C. 83.) But none of the generals of this vast army were equal, 
 in military talents, to Sylla ; their forces gradually deserted them, 
 and after a short but severe struggle, Sylla became master of Rome. 
 
 24. A dreadful proscription of his enemies followed, far exceed- 
 ing the atrocities of Marius ; for Sylla filled not only Rome, but 
 all Italy, with massacres, which, in the language of the old writers, 
 had neither numbers nor bounds. He caused himself to be appointed 
 dictator for an unlimited time, (B. C. 81,) reestablished the govern- 
 ment on an aristocratical basis, and after having ruled nearly three 
 years, to the astonishment of every one he resigned his power, and 
 retired to private life. He died soon after, of a loathsome disease, 
 
 a, " From the time of Marius, the Roman military forces are always counted by cohorts or 
 tmall battalions, each containing four hundred and twenty men." Niebubr, iv. 193.
 
 176 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAET L 
 
 at the age of sixty years, leaving, by his own direction, the following 
 characteristic inscription to be engraved on his tomb. " Here lies 
 Sylla, who was never outdone in good offices by his friend, nor in 
 acts of hostility by his enemy." (B. C. 77.) 
 
 25. A Marian faction, headed by Sertorius, a man of great mili- 
 tary talents, still existed in Spain, threatening to sever that province 
 from Koine, and establish a new kingdom there. After Sertorius 
 had defeated several Roman armies, the youthful Pompey, after- 
 wards surnamed the Great, was sent against him ; but he too was 
 vanquished, and it was not until the insurgents had been deprived of 
 their able leader by treachery, that the rebellion was quelled, and 
 Spain tranquillized. (B. C. 70.) During the continuance of the 
 Spanish war, a formidable revolt of the slaves, headed by Spar'tacus, 
 
 ix. SERVILE a ce ^ e brated gladiator, had broken out in Italy. At first 
 
 WAR IN Spar' tacus and his companions formed a desperate band 
 
 of robbers and murderers, but their numbers eventually 
 
 increased to a hundred and twenty thousand men, and three practo- 
 
 rian and two consular armies were completely defeated by them. 
 
 The war lasted upwards of two years, and at one time Rome itself 
 
 was in danger ; but the rebels, divided among themselves, were finally 
 
 overcome, and nearly all exterminated, by the praetor Cras' sus, the 
 
 growing rival of Pompey. (B. C. 70.) 
 
 26. During the progress of these events in Italy, a second war had 
 broken out with Mithridates, (83 B. C.,) but after a continuance of 
 
 two years it had been terminated by treaty. (81 B. C.) 
 
 AJJD THIRD Seven years later, Mithridates, who had long been pre- 
 
 MITHRIDATIC paring for hostilities, broke the second treaty between 
 
 \TARS 
 
 him and the Romans by the invasion of Bythyn' ia, and 
 thus commenced the third Mithridatic war. At first Lucullus, who 
 was sent against him, was successful, and amassed immense treasures ; 
 but eventually he was defeated, and Mithridates gained possession 
 of nearly all Asia Minor. Manil' ius, the tribune, then proposed 
 that Pompey, who had recently gained great honor by a successful 
 war against the pirates in the Mediterranean, should be placed over 
 all the other generals in the Asiatic provinces, retaining at the same 
 time the command by sea. This was a greater accumulation of 
 power than had ever been intrusted to any Roman citizen, but the 
 law was adopted. It was on this ocasion that the orator Cicero 
 pronounced his famous oration Pro lege Manilla, (" for the Manilian 
 law.") Caesar also, who was just thon rising into eminence, approved
 
 CHAP. VI] ROMAN HISTORY. 177 
 
 the measure, while the friends of Cras' sus in vain attempted to de- 
 feat it. 
 
 27. Pompey, then passing with a large army into Asia, (B. C. 66.) 
 in one campaign defeated Mithridates on the banks of the Euphrates 
 and drove the monarch from his kingdom ; and in the following year, 
 after reducing Syria, thus putting an end to the empire of the Seleu'- 
 cidaa he found an opportunity of extending Roman interference to the 
 affairs of Palestine. Each of the two claimants to the throne, the 
 brothers Hyreanus and Aristobulus, sought his assistance, and as he 
 decided in favor of the former, the latter prepared to resist the Roman, 
 and shut himself up in Jerusalem. After a siege of three months 
 the city was taken ; its walls and fortifications were thrown down ; 
 Hyreanus was appointed to be high-priest, and governor of the 
 country, but was required to pay tribute to the Romans ; while 
 Aristobulus, with his sons and daughters, was taken to Rome to 
 grace the triumph of Pompey. From this time the situation of 
 Judea differed little from that of a Roman province, although for a 
 while later it was governed by native princes ; but all of them were 
 more or less subject to Roman authority. About the time of Pom- 
 pey 's conquest of Jerusalem, Mithridates, driven from one province 
 to another, and finding no protection even among his own relatives, 
 terminated his life by poison. (B. C. 63.) His dominions and vast 
 wealth were variously disposed of by Pompey in the name of the 
 Roman people. 
 
 28. While Pompey was winning laurels in Asia, the republic was 
 brought near the brink of destruction by a conspiracy headed by the 
 infamous Catiline. Rome was at this time in a state of complete 
 anarchy ; the republic was a mere name ; the laws had 
 
 lost their power; the elections were carried by bribery; RACY OF 
 and the city populace was a tool in the hands of the CATILINK - 
 nobles in their feuds against one another. In this corrupt state of 
 tilings Sergius Catiline, a man of patrician rank, and of great abili- 
 ties, but a monster of wickedness, who had acted a distinguished 
 part in the bloody scenes of Sylla's tyranny, placed himself at the 
 head of a confederacy of profligate young nobles, who hoped, by 
 elevating their leader to the consulship, or by murdering those who 
 opposed them, to make themselves masters of Rome, and to gain 
 possession of the public treasures, and the property of the citizens 
 Many circumstances, favored the audacious schemes of the conspira- 
 tors. Pompey was abroad Cras' sus, striving with mad eagerness 
 H* 12
 
 178 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART I 
 
 for power and riches, countenanced the growing influence of Catiline, 
 as a means of his own aggrandizement Caesar, laboring to revive 
 the party of Marius, and courting the favor of the people by public 
 shows and splendid entertainments, spared Catiline, and perhaps se- 
 cretly encouraged him, while the only two eminent Romans who 
 boldly determined to uphold their falling country were Cato the 
 younger, and the orator Cicero. 
 
 29. While the storm which Catiline had been raising was threat- 
 ening to burst upon Rome, and every one dreaded the arch-conspira- 
 tor, but no one had the courage to come forward against him, Cicero 
 offered himself a candidate for the consulship, in opposition to Catiline, 
 and was elected. An attempt of the conspirators to murder Cicero in his 
 own house was frustrated by the watchful vigilance of the consul ; and 
 a fortunate accident disclosed to him all their plans, which he laid be- 
 fore the senate. Even in the senate-house Catiline boldly confronted 
 Cicero, who there pronounced against him that famous oration which 
 saved Rome by driving Catiline from the city. Catiline then fled to 
 Etruria, where he had a large force already under arms, while seve- 
 ral of his confederates remained in the city to open the gates to him 
 on his approach ; but they were apprehended, and brought to punish- 
 ment. An army was then sent against the insurgents, who were 
 completely defeated ; and most of them, imitating Catiline, fought 
 to the last, and died sword in hand. (B. C. 63.) Cicero, to whom 
 the Romans were indebted for the overthrow of the conspiracy, was 
 now hailed as the Father and Deliverer of his country. 
 
 30. Soon after the return of Pompey from Asia, the jealousies 
 between him and Cras' sus were renewed ; but Julius Caesar succeeded 
 
 in reconciling the rivals, and in uniting them with him- 
 FIRST TIII- self in a secret partnership of power, called the First Tri- 
 UMVIRATK. umvirate. (60 B. C.) These men, by their united in- 
 fluence, were now able to carry all their measures ; and they virtually 
 usurped the powers of the senate, as well as the command of the 
 legions. Caesar first obtained the office of consul, (B. C. 59,) and, 
 when the year of his consulship had expired, was made commander 
 of all G-aul, (B. C. 58,) although but a small portion of that country 
 was then under the Roman dominion. Cras' sus, whose avarice was 
 unbounded, soon after obtained the command of Syria, famed for its 
 luxury and wealth ; while to Pompey were given Africa and Spain, 
 although he left the care of his provinces to others, and still remained 
 in Italy.
 
 CHAP. VI] ROM AF HISTORY. 179 
 
 31. In the course of eight years Casar conquered all Gaul, which 
 consisted of a great number of separate nations twice passed the 
 Rhine 1 into Germany and twice passed over into Britain, and sub- 
 dued the southern part of the island. Hitherto Britain had been 
 known only by name to the Greeks and Romans ; and its first inva- 
 sion by Caesar, in the year 55 B. C., is the beginning of its authentic 
 history. The disembarkation of the Romans, somewhere on the 
 eastern coast of Kent, a was firmly disputed by the natives ; but stern 
 discipline and steady valor overawed them, and they proffered sub- 
 mission, A second invasion in the ensuing spring was also resisted ; 
 but genius and science asserted their usual superiority ; and peace, 
 and the withdrawal of the invaders, were purchased by the payment 
 of tribute. In the meantime Cras' sus had fallen in Parthia, 2 (B. C. 
 52,) thus leaving but two masters of the Roman world; but Pompey 
 had already become jealous of the greatness of Caesar's fame, and on 
 the death of Julia, the wife of Pompey and daughter of Caesar, the 
 last tie that bound these friends was broken, and they became rivals, 
 and enemies. Pompey had secured most of the senate to his inter- 
 ests ; but Caesar, though absent, had obtained, by the most lavish 
 bribes, numerous and powerful adherents in the very heart of Rome. 
 Among others, Mark Antony and Quintus Cassius, tribunes of the 
 people, favored his interests. 
 
 32. When Caesar requested that he might stand for the consulship 
 in his absence, the senate denied the request. When or xm. CIVIL 
 dered to disband his legions and resign his provinces, he m 
 
 o * A TWKEN L-E->AR 
 
 immediately promised compliance, if Pompey would do AND POMPEY. 
 the same ; but the senate peremptorily ordered him to disband his 
 
 1. The Rhine rises in Switzerland, only a few miles from the source of the Rhone passes 
 through Lake Constance then flows west to the town of Basle, near the borders of France, 
 thence generally north-west to the North Sea or German Ocean. It formed the ancient 
 bo'indary between Gaul and the German tribes, and was first passed by Julius Ciesar in his 
 invasion of the German nation of the Sicambri. 
 
 2. Pa.rlh.ia was originally a small extent of country, south-east of the Caspian Sea. After 
 the death of Alexander the Great a separate kingdom was formed there, which gradually ex- 
 tended to the Indus on the east and the Tigris on the west, until it embraced the fairest prov- 
 inces of the old Persian monarchy. By the victory over Crassus the Parthians obtained a great 
 increase of power, and during a long time after this event they were almost constantly at war 
 with the Romans. The Parthian empire was overthrown by the southern Persians 226 years 
 after the Christian era, when the later Persian empire of the Sassanidte was established. "The 
 mode of fighting adopted by the Parthian cavalry was peculiar, and well calculated to annoy. 
 U hen apparently in full retreat, they would turn round on their steeds and discharge their 
 arrows with the ;nost unerring accuracy ; and hence, to borrow the language of an ancient 
 writer it was victory to them if a counterfeit flight threw their pursuers into disorder." 
 
 a. The place where Caesar is believed to have landed is at the town of Deal, near what ii 
 called the South Foreland, sixty-six miles south-east from London.
 
 180 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAET L 
 
 army before a specified day, under the penalty of. being declared a 
 public enemy. (B. C. 49.) The tribunes Antony and Cassius fled 
 to the army of Caesar then at Raven' na, 1 bearing with them the hos- 
 tile mandate of the senate, and by their harangues inflaming the sol- 
 diers against the measures of the senatorial party. Caesar, confident 
 of the support of his troops, now passed the Rubicon in hostile array, 
 an act deemed equivalent to an open declaration of war against his 
 country. The senate and Pornpey, alarmed at the rapidity of his 
 movements, and finding their forces daily deserting them, fled across 
 the Aclriat' ic into Greece ; and in sixty days from the passage of the 
 Rubicon, Caesar was master of all Italy. 
 
 33. Caisar soon obtained the surrender of Sicily and Sardinia, 
 after which he passed over to Spain, where Pompey's lieutenants 
 commanded, rapidly reduced the whole Peninsula, took Marseilles 
 by siege on his return through Gaul, and, on his arrival at Rome, 
 was declared by the remnant of the senate sole dictator ; but after 
 eleven days he laid aside the office, and took that of consul. Pompey 
 had already collected a numerous army in the eastern provinces, 
 and thither Caesar followed him. Near Dyrrach' ium, 2 in Illyr' i- 
 cum, he assaulted the intrenched camp of Pompey, but was re- 
 pulsed with the loss of many standards, and his own camp would 
 have been taken had not Pompey called off his troops, in apprehen- 
 sion of an ambuscade ; on which Caesar remarked that " the war 
 would have been at an end, if Pompey had known how to profit by 
 victory." 
 
 34. Caesar then boldly advanced into Thes' saly, followed by Pompey 
 at the head of a superior force. The two armies met on the plains 
 of Pharsalia,* where was fought the battle which decided the fate of 
 the Roman world. (B. C. 48.) Caesar was completely victorious, 
 
 1. Raven' na was originally built on the shore of the Adriat' ic, near the most southerr 
 mouth of the river Po. Augustus constructed a new harbor three miles from the old town, 
 and henceforward the new harbor became the principal station of the Roman Adriat' ic fleet : 
 but such was the accumulation of mud brought down by the streams, that, as Gibbon relates, 
 so early as the fifth or sixth century after Christ, "the port of Augustus was converted into 
 pleasant orchards ; and a lonely grove of pines covered the ground where the Roman fleet 
 once rode at anchor." Raven' na was the capital of Italy during the last years of the Western 
 empire of the Romans, and it still contains numerous ii/teresting specimens of the architecture 
 of that period. 
 
 2. Dyrrach' ium, which was a Grecian city, at first called Epitlamnvs, was situated on the 
 Illyrian coast of Macedonia, north of Apollonia. Its modern name is Durnzzo, au unhealthy 
 village of Turkish Albania. 
 
 3. Pkarsblia. was a city situated in the central portion of Thessaly, on a southern tributary 
 of the Peneus. Tne name of Pliarsa, applied to a few ruins about fifteen miles south-west 
 from LaritJHa, marks the site of the ancient city
 
 CHAP. VI.] ROMAN HISTORY. 181 
 
 and Pompey, fleuing in disguise from the field of battle, attended 
 only by his son Sextus, and a few followers of rank, pursued his 
 way to Mytilene, where he took on brfard his wife Cornelia and 
 sailed to Egypt, intending to claim the hospitality of the young king 
 Ptol' emy, whose father he had befriended. Ptol' emy, then at war 
 with his sister Cleopatra, was encamped with his army near Pelusi- 
 um, 1 whither Pompey directed his course, after sending to inform 
 the king of his approach. In the army of Ptol' emy there was a 
 Roman, named Septim' ius, who advised the young prince to put 
 Pompey to death, in order to secure the favor of Caesar ; and just 
 as Pompey was stepping on shore from a boat that had been sent to 
 receive him, he was stabbed, in the sight of his wife and son. Soon 
 after Caesar arrived at Alexandria in Egypt in pursuit of the fugi- 
 tives, when the ring and head of Pompey, which were presented to 
 him, gave him the first information of the fate of his rival. He 
 shed tears at the sight, and turned away with horror from the spec- 
 tacle. He afterwards ordered the head to be burned with perfumes, 
 in the Roman method, and loaded with favors those who had adhered 
 to Pompey to the last. 
 
 35. Caesar, in his eager pursuit of Pompey, had taken with him 
 to Alexandria only a small body of troops, and when, captivated by 
 the charms and beauty of Cleopatra, the Egyptian queen, who ap- 
 plied to him for protection, he decided against the claims of her 
 brother, the party of the latter conceived the plan of overwhelming 
 him in Alexandria, so that his situation there was similar to that of 
 Cortez in Mexico. The royal palace, in which Caesar had fortified 
 himself, was set on fire, and the celebrated librai-y established there 
 by Ptol' emy Philadelphia was burnt to ashes. With difficulty 
 Caesar escaped from the city to the island of Pharos, 2 where he 
 maintained himself until reinforcements arrived. He then over- 
 threw the power of Ptol' emy, who lost his life by drowning, and 
 after having established Cleopatra on the throne he marched against 
 Pharnaces, king of Pontus, son of Mithridates, whose dominions he 
 reduced with such rapidity that he announced the result to the Ro- 
 
 1. Peleusium wis a frontier city of Egypt, at the entrance of the eastern mouth of the 
 Kile. 
 
 2. Pharos was a small island in the bay of Alexandria, at the entrance of the principal bar- 
 Dor, one mile from the shore, with wh'ch it was connected by a causeway. The celebrated 
 " Tower of Pharos" was built on the island in the reign of Ptol' emy Philadelphus, to serve 
 as a lighthouse. The modern lighthouse tower, which stands on the island, has nothing of th 
 beauty and araudeur of the old me.
 
 182 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAET l 
 
 man seiu.t 3 in the well known words, veni, vuli, vici, " I came, I saw, 
 I conquer 3d." 
 
 36. On Caesar's return to Rome, (B. C. 47,) after an absence of 
 nearly two years, he granted a general amnesty to all the followers 
 of Pompey, and by his clemencj gained a strong hold on the affec- 
 tions of the people. The servility of the senate knew no bounds, 
 and the whole republic was placed in his hands. Still there was a 
 large and powerful party in Africa and Spain opposed to him, headed by 
 Cato, the sons of Pompey, and other generals. Caesar, passing over to 
 Africa, defeated his enemies there in the decisive battle of Thapsus, 1 
 after which the inflexible Cato, who commanded the garrison of Utica, 
 having advised his followers not to continue their resistance, commit- 
 ted suicide. (46 B. C.) He had seen, he said, the republic passing 
 away, and he could live no longer. Caesar expressed his regret that 
 Cato had deprived him of the pleasure of pardoning him. 
 
 37. The war in Africa had been finished in five months. Fresh 
 honors awaited Caesar at Rome. He enjoyed four triumphs in one 
 month ; the senate created him dictator for ten years ; he was ap- 
 pointed censor of the public morals, and his statue was placed oppo- 
 site that of Jupiter, in the capitol, and inscribed, " To Caesar, the 
 demigod." He made many useful changes in the laws, corrected 
 many abuses in the administration of justice, extended the privileges 
 of Roman citizens to whole cities and provinces in different parts 
 of the empire, and reformed the calendar upon principles established 
 by the Egyptian astronomers, by making an intercalation of sixty- 
 seven days between the months of November and December, so that 
 the name of the December month was transferred from the time of 
 the autumnal equinox to that of the winter solstice, where it still re- 
 mains. 
 
 38. From the cares of civil government Caesar was called to Spain, 
 where Cneus and Sextus, the two sons of Pompey, had raised a large 
 army against him. In the spring of the year 45 he defeated them in a 
 hard-fought battle in the plains of Munda, 2 after having been obliged, 
 in order to encourage his men, to fight in the foremost ranks as a 
 common soldier. Caesar said that he had often fought for victory, 
 but that in this battle he fought for his life. The elder of Pompey 's 
 
 1. T/inpsuf, now J)emsas, was a town of little importance on the sea-coast, about one 
 hundred miles south-east from Carthage. 
 
 2. Munda wus a town a short distance from the Mediterranean in the southern part of Spain. 
 The little village of Monda in Grenada, twenty-five nv'es west from Malaga, is supposed to be 
 oear the site of the ancient city.
 
 CHAP. VI J ROMAN HISTORY. 183 
 
 sons was slain in the pursuit after the battle, but Sextus the younger 
 escaped. After a campaign of nine months Caesar returned to Rome, 
 and enjoyed a triumph for the reduction of Spain, which had termi- 
 nated the civil war in the Iloman provinces. 
 
 39. Caesar was next made dictator for life, with the title of impera- 
 tor and the powers of sovereignty, although the outward form of the 
 republic was allowed to remain. His ever active mind now planned 
 a series of foreign conquests, and formed vast designs for the im- 
 provement of the empire which he had gained. He ordered the laws 
 to be digested into a code, he undertook to drain the great marshes in 
 the vicinity of Rome, to form a capacious harbor at the mouth of 
 the Tiber, to cut across the isthmus of Corinth, to make roads across 
 the Apennines, dig canals, collect public libraries, erect a new 
 theatre, and build a magnificent temple to Mars. But while he was 
 occupied with these gigantic projects the people became suspicious 
 that he courted the title of king ; and at his suggestion, as is sup- 
 posed, Mark Antony offered him a royal diadem during the celeb/a 
 tion of the feast of the Lupercalia ; but no shout of approbation fol- 
 lowed the act, and he was obliged to decline the bauble. 3 - 
 
 40. A large number of senators, headed by the prsetors Cassius 
 and Brutus, regarding Caasar as an usurper, soon after formed a con 
 spiracy to take his life, and fixed on the fifteenth (the Ides) of March, 
 a day appointed for the meeting of the senate, for the execution of 
 their plot. As soon as Caesar had taken his seat in the senate-house, 
 the conspirators crowded around him, and as one of them, pretending 
 to urge some request, laid hold of his robe as if in the act of sup- 
 plication, the others rushed upon him with drawn daggers, and he 
 fell pierced with twenty-three wounds, at the base of Pompey's statue, 
 which was sprinkled with his blood. b (B. C. 44.) 
 
 41. As soon as the deed of death was consummated, Brutus raised 
 
 a. " You all did see, that on the Lupercal, 
 
 I thrice presented him a kingly crown, 
 Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition ? 
 Yet Brutus says, he was ambitious ; 
 And sure, he is an honorable man." 
 
 Antony's Oration. Shakspeare'a Julius Catar. 
 
 b. "For when the noble Cajsar saw him stab, 
 
 Ingratitude, more strong than traitors arms, 
 
 Quite vanquished him : then burst his mighty heart ; 
 
 And, in his mantle muffling up his face, 
 
 Eren at the base of Pompey's statue, 
 
 Which all the while ran blood, great Ctesar fell." 
 
 Antonyms Oration.
 
 184 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PAET 1. 
 
 his bloody dagger, and congratulated the senate, and Cicero in par- 
 ticular, on the recovery of liberty ; but the greater part of the sena- 
 tors fled in dismay from Rome, or shut themselves up in their houses; 
 and as the conspirators had formed no plans of future action, the 
 minds of the citizens were in the utmost suspense ; but tranquillity 
 prevailed until the day appointed by the senate for the funeral 
 Then Mark Antony, who had hitherto urged conciliation, ascended 
 the rostrum to deliver the funeral oration. After he had wrought 
 upon the minds of the people in a most artful manner by enumerating 
 the great exploits and noble deeds of the murdered Caesar, he lifted 
 up the bloody robe, and showed them the body itself, ' all marred by 
 traitors.' The multitude were seized with such indignation and 
 rage, that while some, tearing up the benches of the senate-house, 
 formed of them a funeral pile and burnt the body of Caesar, others 
 ran through the streets with drawn weapons and flaming torches, de- 
 nouncing vengeance against the conspirators. Brutus and Cassius, 
 and their adherents, fled from Rome, and prepared to defend them- 
 selves by force of arms. 
 
 42. Antony, assisted by Lep' idus, now sought to place himself at 
 the head of the State ; but he found a rival in the young Octavius 
 Caesar, the grandson of Caesar's sister Julia, and principal heir of the 
 murdered dictator. The senate adhered to the interests of Octavius, 
 and declared Antony a public enemy, and several battles had already 
 been fought between the opposing parties in the north of Italy and 
 Gaul, when the three leaders, Antony, Lep' idus, and Octavius, hav- 
 
 xiv TH * n & me * * n private conference on a small island of the 
 SECOND TRI- Rhine, agreed to settle their differences, and take upon 
 UMVIRATE. t nemse i ves the government of the republic for five ye ars 
 thus forming the Second Triumvirate. (B. C. 43.) A cold-blooded 
 proscription of the enemies of the several parties to the compact fol- 
 lowed. Antony yielded his own uncle, and Lep' idus his own 
 brother, while Octavius, to his eternal infamy, consented to the sac- 
 rifice of the virtuous Cicero to satisfy the vengeance of his colleagues. 
 Cicero was betrayed to the assassins sent to dispatch him, by one of 
 his own domestics ; but, tired of life, he forbade his servants to de- 
 fend him, and yielded himself to his fate without a struggle. 
 
 43. Brutus and Cassius, at the head of the republican party had 
 by this time made themselves masters of Macedonia, Greece, and 
 the Asiatic provinces; and Octavius and Anton}, as soon as 'they 
 had settled the government at Rome, set out to meet them. At
 
 CHAT. VI] ROMAX HISTORY 185 
 
 Philip' pi, 1 a town in Thrace, two battles were fought, and fortune, 
 rather than talent, gave the victory to the triumvirs. (B. C. 42.) 
 Both Cassius and Brutus, giving way to despair, destroyed them- 
 selves ; their army was dispersed, and most of the soldiers after- 
 wards entered the service of the victors. Octavius returned with 
 his legions to Italy, while Antony remained as the master of the 
 Eastern provinces. 
 
 44 From Greece Antony passed over into Asia Minor, where he 
 caused great distress by the heavy tribute he exacted of the inhab- 
 itants. While at Tarsus, 2 in Cilicia, the celebrated Cleopatra came 
 to pay him a visit ; and so captivated was the Roman with the 
 charms and beauty of the Egyptian queen, that he accompanied her 
 on her return to Alexandria, where he lived for a time in indolence, 
 dissipation, and luxury, neglectful of the calls of interest, honor, and 
 ambition. In the meantime a civil war had broken out in Italy ; for 
 the brother of Antony, aided by Fulvia, the wife of the latter, had 
 taken up arras against Octavius ; but it was not until the rebellion 
 had been quelled, and Octavius was everywhere triumphant, that An- 
 tony saw the necessity of returning to Italy. 
 
 45. On his way he met at Athens his wife Fulvia, whom he blamed 
 as the cause of the recent disasters, treated her with the utmost con- 
 tempt, and leaving her on her death-bed hastened to fight Augustus. 
 All thought that another fierce struggle for the empire was at hand ; 
 but the rivals had a personal interview at Brundusium, 3 where a re- 
 conciliation was effected. To secure the permanence of the peace, 
 Antony married Octavia, the half-sister of Octavius. A new division 
 of the empire was made ; Antony was to have the eastern provinces 
 beyond the Ionian sea ; Octavius the western, and Lep' idus Africa ; 
 
 1. Philip' pi, a city in the western part of Thrace, afterwards included in Macedonia, was 
 about seventy-five miles north-east from the present Saloniki. In addition to the victory gained 
 here by Antony and Octavius, it is rendered more interesting from the circumstance of its 
 being the first place where the Gospel was preached by St. Paul, (see Acts, xvi ,) and also from 
 the Epistle addressed by him to the Philippia-ns. The ruins of the city still retain the name 
 of Filibah, pronounced nearly the same as Pkilippi. {Map No. I.) 
 
 2. Tarsus, the capital of Cilicia, was situated on the river Cydnus, about twelve miles from 
 the Mediterranean. It was the birth-place of St. Paul, of Antip' ater the stoic, and of Athen- 
 odorus the philosopher. It is still a village of some six or seven thousand inhabitants, and 
 some remains of its ancient magnificence are still visible. The visit of Cleopatra to Antony 
 herself attired like Venus, and her attendants like cupids, in a galley covered with gold, whose 
 sails were of purple, the oars of silver, and cordage of silk is finely described in Shakspeare's 
 play of Antony and Cleopatra, Act II. scene 2. (Map No. IV.) 
 
 3. Brundusium, now Brindisi, one of the most important cities of ancient Italy, and the 
 port whence the intercourse between Italy and Greece and the East was usually carriod on, 
 was situated on the coast of Apulia, about three hundred miles south-east from Rome. I onre 
 had an excellent harbor, which is now nearf y filled up. (Map No. VII.)
 
 186 ANCIENT HISTORY. [PART L 
 
 and soon after, Sextius Pompey, who had long maintained himself in 
 Sicily against the triumvirs, was admitted into the partnership, and 
 assigned Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and Achaia. 
 
 46. The peace thus concluded was of short duration. Octavius, 
 without any reasonable pretext for hostilities, quarrelled with Sextius 
 Pompey and drove him from his dominions. Pompey fled to Phrygia, 
 where he was slain by one of Antony's lieutenants. Lep' idus and 
 Octavius next quarrelled about the possession of Sicily ; but Octavius 
 corrupted the soldiers of Lep' idus, and induced them to desert their 
 general, who was compelled to surrender his province to his rival. 
 Antony, in the meantime, had been engaged in an unsuccessful expe- 
 dition against the Parthians; after which, returning to Egypt, he 
 once more became enslaved by the charms of Cleopatra, upon whom 
 he conferred several Roman provinces in Asia. When his wife Oe 
 tavia set out from Rome to visit him he ordered her to return, and after- 
 wards repudiated her, pretending a previous marriage with Cleopatra. 
 
 47. After this insult Octavius could no longer keep peace with him, 
 and as the war had long been anticipated, the most formidable prepa- 
 rations were made on both sides, and both parties were soon in 
 readiness. Their fleets met off the promontory of Ac' tium, 1 in the 
 Ionian sea, while the hostile armies, drawn up on opposite sides of the 
 strait which enters the Ambracian Grulf, were spectators of the battle. 
 (B. C. 31.) While the victory was yet undecided, Cleopatra, who 
 had accompanied Antony with a large force, overcome with anxiety 
 and fear, ordered her galley to remove from the scene of action. A 
 large number of the Egyptian ships, witnessing her flight, withdrew 
 from the battle ; and the infatuated Antony, as soon as he saw that 
 Cleopatra had fled, apparently losing his self-possession, hastily fol- 
 lowed her in a quick-sailing vessel, and being taken on board the 
 galley of Cleopatra, became the companion of her flight. The fleet 
 of Antony was annihilated, and his land forces, soon after, made 
 terms with the conqueror. 
 
 48. Octavius, after first returning to Italy to tranquillize some dis- 
 turbances there, pursued the fugitives to Egypt. Antony endeavored 
 to impede the march of the victor to Alexandria, but seeing all his 
 efforts fruitless, in a paroxysm of rage he reproached Cleopatra with 
 being the author of his misfortunes, and resolving never to fall alive 
 into the hands of his enemy, he put an end to his own life. When 
 
 1. The promontoiy of jfc' tium was a small neck of land at the north-western extremity ot 
 Acarnania, at the entrance of the Ambracian Ovlf, now Gulf of Arta.
 
 CHAP. VI.] ROMAN HISTORY. 187 
 
 Cleopatra, who had shut herself up in her palace, found that Octa 
 vius designed to spare her only to adorn his triumph, she caused a 
 poisonous viper to be applied to her arm, and thus followed Antony 
 in deith. (B. C. 30.) Egypt immediately submitted to the sway 
 of Octavius, and became a province of the Roman empire. 
 
 49. The death of Antony had put an on \ to the Triumvirate ; and 
 Octavius was now left sole master of the Roman world. While 
 taking the most effectual measures to secure his power, X r. OCTA- 
 he dissembled his real purposes, and talked of restoring V1CS SOLE 
 
 , .. . .. MASTEE OF 
 
 the republic ; but it was evident that a free constitution THE KOMAN 
 could no longer be maintained ; the most eminent citi- WORLD. 
 zcns besought him to take the government into his own hands, and at 
 the beginning of the 28th year before the Christian era, the history 
 of the Roman Republic ends. All the armies had sworn allegiance 
 to Octavius ; he was made pro-consul over the whole Roman empire 
 he gave the administration of the provinces to whomsoever he 
 pleased and appointed and removed senators at his will. In the 
 27th year B. C. the senate conferred upon him the title of AUGUSTUS, 
 or " The Divine," and of Imperator, or " chief governor," for ten 
 years, and gave his name to the sixth month of the Roman year, 
 (August) as that of Julius Caesar had been given to the fifth, and 
 four years later he was made perpetual tribune of the people, which 
 rendered his person sacred. Although without the title of a mon- 
 arch, and discarding the insignia of royalty, his exalted station con 
 ferred upon him all the powers of sovereignty, which he exercised, 
 nevertheless, with moderation, seemingly desirous that the triumvir 
 Octavius should be forgotten in the mild reign of the emperor Augustus. 
 50. After a series of successful wars in Asia, Africa, and in Spain, 
 and the subjugation of Aquitania, Pannonia, Dalmatia, and Illy' ria, 
 by the Roman arms, a general peace, with the exception of some 
 triuing disturbances in the frontier provinces, was established 
 throughout the vast dominions of the empire, which now extended 
 on the east from the cataracts of the Nile to the plains of Scythia. 
 and on the west from the Libyan deserts and the pillars of Hercules 
 to the German ocean. a The temple of Janus was now closed b for 
 the third time since the foundation of Rome. It was at this auspi- 
 cious period that Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah, was born; 
 and thus, literally, was his advent the herald of "peace on earth, 
 and good will toward men." 
 
 a. (,B. C. 10. Sec Map No. IX.) b. (B. C. 10.)
 
 PART II. 
 
 MODERN HISTORY 
 ...... 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ROMAN HISTORY CONTINUED, FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN ERA, TO THE OVERTHROW OF THE WESTERN 
 
 EMPIRE OF THE ROMANS, A. D. 1, TO A. D. 476. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 ROMAN HISTORY FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA TO THE DEATH 
 OF DOJtlTIAN, THE LAST OF THE TWELVE CAESARS, A. D. 96. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. EARLIUR AND LATER HISTORY OF THE EMPIRE COMPARED. 2. The empire 
 at the end of the first century of the Christian era. The feeling with which we hurry over the 
 closing scenes of Roman history. Importance of the history of the " decline and fall " of the 
 empire. Subjects of the present chapter. 
 
 3. JULIUS CSAR. Commencement of the Roman empire. 4. The reign of AUGUSTUS. 
 Rebellion of the Germans. 5. Grief of Augustus at the loss of his legions. The danger of inva- 
 sion averted. 6. The accession of TIBE' RIUS. The selection of future sovereigns. 7. Character 
 of Tiberius, and commencement of his reign. 8. German wars German' icus. 9. Sejanus, 
 the minister of Tiberius. [Capreae.] 10. The death of Sejanus. Death of Tiberius. Cruci- 
 fixion of the Saviour. 11. CALIO' ULA. His character, and wicked actions. 12. Mis follies. 
 His extravagance. His death. 13. CLAUDIUS proclaimed emperor. His character. 14. His 
 two wives. His death. 15. Foreign events of the reign of Claudius. 16. NERO. The first five 
 years of his reign. Death of Agrippina, and of Burrhus, Seneca, and Lucan. Conflagration 
 of Rome. 17. Persecution^ of the Christians. Nero's extravagances. 18. The provinces pil- 
 laged by him. His popularity with the rabble. Revolts against him. His death. 19. Foreign 
 events of the reign of Nero. [Druids. The Ice ni London.] 
 
 20. End of the reign of the Julian family. Brief reign of GALBA. 21. Character, and reign 
 of OTHO. 22. Character, and reign of VITEL' LIUS. Revolt in Syria. 23. Vitel' lius, forced to 
 resist, is finally put to death by the populace. 24. Temporary rule of Domitian. Character, 
 and reign of VESPASIAN. 25. Beginning, and causes of the JK WISH WAR. 26. Situation of Jeru- 
 salem, and commencement of the siege by the Roman army. Expectations of Titus. 27. Prom- 
 ises made to the Jews. Their strange infatuation. 28. The horrors of the siege. 29. Dreadful 
 mortality in the city. The fall of Jerusalem. 30. The number of those who perished, am\ of 
 those made prisoners. Fate of the prisoners. Destruction of the Jewish nation 31. Comple- 
 tion of the conquest of Britain. The enlightened policy of Agric' ola. [Caledonia.] 32. TITUS 
 succeeds Vespasian. His character. Events of his brief reign. [Vesuvius. Herculaneum. 
 Pompeii.] 13. DOMITIAN. His character, and the character of his reign. Persecut ons. 34.
 
 CHAP. I] ROM AX HISTORY. 189 
 
 Provincial a fairs. The triumphs of Domitian. [Meesia. Dacia. Germany.] 35. Death of 
 Domitiau. 36. Close of the reign of the " Twelve Ciesars." Their several deaths. Character 
 of the history of the Roman emperors thus far. 37. The city of Rome, and the Roman empire. 
 The beginning of national decay. 
 
 1. As we enter upon the time of the Roman emperors, Roman his- 
 tory, so highly pleasing and attractive in its early stages, and during 
 the eventful period of the Republic, gradually declines in interest to 
 the general reader ; for the Roman people, whose many r . EARLIER 
 virtues and sufferings awakened our warmest sympathies, ASD LATEa 
 
 HISTORY OF 
 
 had now become corrupt and degenerate ; the liberal in- THE EMP1RE 
 fluences of their popular assemblies, and the freedom of COMPARED. 
 the Roman senate, had given place to arbitrary force ; and although 
 the splendors of the empire continue to dazzle for awhile, hencefor- 
 ward the political history of the Romans is little more than the 
 biographies of individual rulers, and their few advisers and asso- 
 ciates in power, who controlled the political destinies of more than 
 a hundred millions of people. 
 
 2. "We shall find that, at the end of the first century of the 
 Christian era, the empire, having already attained its full strength 
 and maturity, began to verge towards its decline ; and we are apt to 
 hurry over the closing scenes of Roman history with an instinctive 
 feeling that shrinks from the contemplation of waning glories and 
 national degeneracy. But while the history of the Republican era 
 may exceed in interest that of the " decline and fall " of the empire, 
 yet the latter is of far greater political importance than the former ; 
 for, including the early history of many important sects, and codes, 
 and systems, whose influences still exist, it is the link that connects 
 the past with the present the Ancient with the Modern world 
 The theologian and jurist must be familiar with it in order to under 
 stand much of the learning and history of their respective depart 
 ments ; and it deserves the careful preparatory study of every reader 
 of modern European history ; as nearly all the kingdoms of modern 
 Europe have arisen from the fragments into which the empire of 
 the Caesars was broken. We proceed then, in the present chapter, 
 to a brief survey, which is all that our limited space will allow, of, 
 first, the overtowering greatness, and, second, the decline, and final 
 overthrow, in all the west of Europe, of that mighty fabric of em- 
 pire which valor had founded, and enlightened policy had so long 
 sustained, upon the seven hills of Rome. 
 
 3. The rule of Julius Caesar, who is called the first of the twelve
 
 190 MODERN HISTORY. f PAET IL 
 
 Caesars, althov^h be was not nominally king, was that of ore who pos- 
 JL jruus sessed all the essential attributes of sovereignty ; and 
 CJJSAR. f r om the battle of Pharsalia, which decided the fate 
 of the Roman world, might with propriety be dated the commence- 
 ment of the Roman empire, although its era is usually dated at the 
 beginning of the twenty-eighth year before the Christian era, the 
 time of the general acknowledgment of the sovereignty of Augustus. 
 
 4. The reign of Augustus continued until the fourteenth year 
 in. AUGUS- a f ter tne birth of Christ forty-four years in all, dating 
 
 Tl ' s - from the battle of Ac' tium, which made Augustus sole 
 sovereign of the empire. After the general peace which followed the 
 early wars and conquests of the emperor, the great prosperity of his 
 reign was disturbed by a rebellion of the Germans, which had been 
 provoked by the extortions of Varus, the Roman commander on the 
 northern frontier. Varus was entrapped in the depths of the German 
 forests, where nearly his whole army was annihilated, and he himself, 
 in despair, put an end to his own life. (A. D. 9.) Awful vengeance 
 was taken upon the Romans who became prisoners, many of them 
 being sacrificed to the gods of the Germans. 
 
 5. The news of the defeat of his general threw Augustus into trans- 
 ports of grief, during which he frequently exclaimed, " Varus, restore 
 me my legions !" It was thought that the Germans would cross the 
 Rhine, and that all Gaul would unite with them in the revolt ; but 
 a large Roman army under Tiberius, the son-in-law and heir of 
 Augustus, was sent to guard the passes of the Rhine, and the danger 
 was averted. 
 
 6. Augustus, having designed Tiberius for his successor, associated 
 him in his counsels, and conferred upon him so large a share of present 
 power, that on the death of the emperor, Tiberius easily took his 
 
 place, so that the nation scarcely perceived the change 
 
 IV TIBERIUS. / A Tk n \ mi. V * A 
 
 ot masters. (A. D. 14.) The policy 01 Augustus in 
 selecting, and preparing 'the way for, the future sovereign, was suc- 
 cessfully imitated by nearly all his successors during nearly two cen- 
 turies, although the emperors continued to be elected, ostensibly at 
 least, by the authority of the senate, and the consent of the soldiers. 
 
 7. Tiberius, a man of reserved character, and of great dissimula- 
 tion, suspicious, dark, and revengeful, but possessing a handsome 
 figure, and in his early years exhibiting great talents and unwearied 
 industry, having yielded with feigned reluctance to Ihe wishes of the 
 senate that ae would undertake the government, commenced his
 
 CHAP. I.] ROMAN HISTORY. 191 
 
 reign with the appearance of justice and moderation ; but after nine 
 years of dissimulation, his sensual and tyrannical character openly 
 exhibited itself in the vicious indulgence of every base passion, and 
 the perpetration of the most wanton cruelties. 
 
 8. The early part of his reign is distinguished by the wars carried 
 on in Germany by his accomplished general and nephew, the virtu- 
 ous German' isus ; but Tiberius, jealous of the glory and fame which 
 German' icus was winning, recalled him from his command, and then 
 sent him as governor to the Eastern provinces, where all his under- 
 takings were thwarted by the secret commands of the emperor, who 
 was supposed to have caused his death to be hastened by poison. 
 
 9. The only confidant of Tiberius was his minister Sejanus, whose 
 character bore a great resemblance to that of his sovereign. Secret- 
 ly aspiring to the empire, he contrived to win the heart of Tiberius by 
 exciting his mistrust towards his own family relatives, most of whom 
 he caused to be poisoned, or condemned to death for suspected trea- 
 son ; but his most successful project was the removal of Tiberius 
 from Rome to the little island of Caprese, 1 where the monarch re- 
 mained during a number of years, indulging his indolence and de- 
 baucheries, whHe Sejanus, ruling at Rome, perpetrated the most 
 shocking cruelties in the name of his master, and put to death the 
 most eminent citizens, scarcely allowing them the useless mockery of 
 a trial. 
 
 10. But Sejanus at length fell under the suspicion of the empe- 
 ror, and the same day witnessed his arrest and execution a mem- 
 orable example of the instability of human grandeur. His death 
 was followed by a general 'massacre of his friends and relations. At 
 length Tiberius himself, after a long career of crime, falling sick, 
 was smothered in bed by one of his officers, at the instigation of the 
 base Calig' ula, the son of German' icus, and adopted heir of the 
 smperor. It was during the reign of Tiberius that Jesus Christ was 
 crucified in Judea, under the praetorship of Pontius Pilate, the Ro- 
 man governor of that province. 
 
 11. Calig' ula, whose real character was unknown to the people, 
 
 1. Cdprece, now called Capri, is a small island, about ten miles in circumference, on the 
 south side of the entrance to the bay of Naples. It is surrounded on all sides but one by lofty 
 and perpendicular cliffs ; and in the centre is a secluded vale, remarkable for its beauty and 
 salubrity. The tyrant was led to select this spot for his abode, as well from its difficulty of ac- 
 cess, as from the mildness and salubrity of its climate, and the unrivalled magnificence ol the 
 prospects which it affords. He is said to have built no less than twelve villas in different parts 
 of the island, and to have named them after the twelve celestial divinities. The ruins of one 
 01 mmii the ulla of Jove are still to be seen on the summit of a cliff opposite Sorrento.
 
 19'* MODERN HISTORY. FPARX IL 
 
 received from them an enthusiastic welcome on his accession to the 
 v. CALIG'- throne, (A. D. 37,) but they soon found him to be a 
 ULA. greater monster of wickedness and dissimilation than his 
 predecessor. A detailed description of his wicked actions, which 
 some have attributed to madness, would afford little pleasure to the 
 reader. Not satisfied with mere murder, he ordered all the prisoners 
 in Rome, and numbers of the aged and infirm, to be thrown to wild 
 beasts ; he claimed divine honors, erected a temple, and instituted a 
 college of priests to superintend his own worship ; and finding the 
 senate too backward in adulation, he seriously contemplated the 
 massacre of the entire body. 
 
 12. His follies were no less conspicuous than his vices. For 
 his favorite horse Incitatus he claimed greater respect and rever- 
 ence than were due to mortals : he built him a stable of marble 
 and a manger of ivory, and frequently invited him to the imperial 
 table ; and it is said that his death alone prevented him from con- 
 ferring upon the animal the honors of the consulship ! A fortune 
 of eighteen millions sterling, which had been left by Tiberius, was 
 squandered by Calig' ula, in a most senseless manner, in little more 
 than a year, while fresh sums, raised by confiscations, were lavished 
 in the same way. At length, after a reign of four years, Calig' ula 
 was murdered by his own guards, to the great joy of the senators, 
 who suddenly awoke to the wild hope of restoring the Republic. 
 
 13. The illusion soon disappeared, for the spirit of Roman liberty 
 no longer existed. The Praetorian guards, a who had all the power 
 in their own hands, insisti:ig upon being governed by a monarch, 
 proclaimed the imbecile Claudius emperor, at a time when he expected 
 
 vi. nothing but death ; and their choice was sanctioned by 
 
 CLAUDIUS. the senate. Claudius was an uncle of the late emperor, 
 
 and brother of German' icus. He was so deficient in judgment and 
 
 reflection as to be deemed intolerably stupid ; he was not destitute of 
 
 a The Prtrtorian guards were gradually instituted by Augustus to protect his person, awe 
 the senate, keep the veterans and legions in check, and prevent or crush the first movements 
 of rebellion. Something similar to them had existed from the earliest times in the body of 
 armed guides who accompanied the general in his military expeditious. At first Augustus 
 stationed three cohorts only in the capital : but Tiberius assembled all of them, to the number 
 of ten thousand, at Rome, and assigned them a permanent and well-fortified camp close t" the 
 walls of the city, on the broad summit of the Quirinul and Viminal hills. This measure of 
 Tiberius forever riveted the fetters of his country. The Praetorian bands, soon learning their 
 own strength, and the weakness of the civil government, became eventually the real masters 
 Rome, i. 61 ; and Niebuhr, v. 75.
 
 CHAF Ij ROMAN HISTORY. 193 
 
 good nature, lut unfortunately he was made the dupe of abandoned 
 favorites, for whose crime history has unjustly held him responsible. 
 
 14. For a time his wife Messalina, the most dissolute and aban- 
 doned of women, ruled him at pleasure ; and numbers of the most 
 worthy citizens were sacrificed to her jealousy, avarice, and revenge ; 
 but finally she was put to death by the emperor for her shameless in- 
 fidelity to him. Claudius then married his niece Agrippina. then a 
 widow and the mother of the afterwards infamous Nero. She was 
 no less cruel in disposition than Messalina ; her ambition was un- 
 bounded, and her avarice insatiable. After having prevailed upon 
 Claudius to adopt as his heir and successor her son Nero, to the 
 exclusion of his own children, she caused the emperor to be poisoned 
 by his physician. (A. D. 54.) As Agrippina had gained the captain 
 of the Praetorian guards to her interest, the army proclaimed Nero 
 emperor, and the senate confirmed their choice. 
 
 15. Thj foreign events of the reign of Claudius were of greater 
 importance than his domestic administration. Julius Caesar had 
 first carried the Eoman arms into Britain in a brief and fruitless in- 
 vasion ; but during the reign of Claudius the Komans began to 
 think seriously of reducing the whole island under their dominion. 
 At first Claudius sent over his general Plau' tus, (A. D. 43,) who 
 gained some victories over the rude inhabitants. Claudius himself 
 then made a journey into Britain, and received the submission of the 
 tribes that inhabited the south-eastern parts of the island ; but the 
 other Britons, under their king Carac' tacus, maintained an obstinate 
 resistance until the Roman army was placed under the command of 
 Ostorius, who defeated Carac' tacus in a great battle, and sent him 
 prisoner to Rome. (A. D. 51.) 
 
 16. Nero, the successor of Claudius, was a youth of only seventeen 
 when he ascended the throne. (A. D. 54.) He had been nurtured 
 in the midst of crimes, and the Roman world looked upon 
 
 him with apprehension and dread ; but during five years, 
 while he still remained under the influence of his early instructors, 
 Seneca and Burrhus, he disappointed the fears of all by the mildness 
 of his reign. At length his mother Agrippina fell under the sus- 
 picion of designing to restore the crown to the still surviving son of 
 Claudius; and the emperor caused both to be put to death. After 
 this he abandoned himself to bloodshed, in which he took a savage 
 delight. He is accused of having caused the death of his able min- 
 T 13
 
 194 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET II. 
 
 ister Burrhus by poison ; Seneca a the philosopher, Lucan b the poet, 
 and most of the leading nobles, were condemned on the charge of 
 treason ; and a conflagration in Rome -which lasted nine days, and 
 destroyed the greater part of the city, (A. D. 64,) was generally be 
 lieved to have been kindled by his orders ; and some reported that 
 in order to enjoy the spectacle, he ascended a high tower, where he 
 amused himself with singing the Destruction of Troy. 
 
 17. In order to remove the suspicions of the people, he caused a 
 report to be circulated that the Christians were the authors of the 
 fire ; and thousands of that innocent sect were put to death under 
 circumstances of the greatest barbarity. Sometimes, covered by the 
 skins of wild beasts, they were exposed to be torn in pieces by de- 
 vouring dogs ; some were crucified : others, wrapped in combustible 
 garments, which were set on fire, were made to serve as torches to 
 illuminate the emperoi's gardens by night. Nero often appeared on 
 the lloman stage in the character of an actor, musician, or gladiator 
 he also visited the principal cities of Greece in succession, where hi 
 obtained a number of victories in the public Grecian games. 
 
 IS. While he was engaged in these extravagances, the provinces 
 of the empire were pillaged to support his luxuries and maintain his 
 almost boundless prodigalities. To the -lower classes, who felt no- 
 thiiig of his despotism, he made monthly distributions of corn, to the 
 encouragement of indolence ; and he gratified the populace of Rome 
 by occasional supplies of wine and meat, and by the magnificent 
 shows of the circus. Nero was popular with the rabble, which ex- 
 plains the fact that his atrocities and follies were so long endured 
 by the Roman people. At length, however, the standard of revolt 
 was raised in Gaul by Vindex, the Roman governor, and soon after 
 .by Galba in Spain. Vindex perished in the struggle ; and Galba 
 
 a. Seneca, the moral philosopher, was boru at Cordova in Spain, in the second or third 
 year of the Christian era; but at an early age he went to reside at Rome. Messalina, 
 who hated him, caused him to be banished to Corsica, where he remained eight years ; but 
 Agrippina recalled him from banishment, and appointed him, in conjunction with Burrhus, 
 tutor to Nero. Burrhus, a man of stern virtue, instructed the prince In military science: 
 Seneca taught him philosophy, the One arts, and elegant accomplishments. Although Seneca 
 laid down excellent rules of morality for others, his own character is not above reproach. 
 Being ordered by Nero to be his own executioner, he caused his veins to be opened In a hot 
 bath ;.but as, at his age, the blood flowed slowly, he drank a dose of hemlock to accelerate 
 his death. 
 
 b. Laican, a nephew of Seneca, and also a native of Cordova, was an eminent Latin poet, 
 although he died at the- early age of twenty-seven years. Of his im.ny poems, the Fharsalia^ 
 or war between Cajsav and Pompey, is the only one that has escaped instruction. H incurrwl 
 the enmity of Nero by vanquishing him in a poetical contest.
 
 CHAP. LJ ROMA:N HISTORY. 195 
 
 would have beon ruined had not the Praetorian guards, under the in- 
 fluence of their commander Otho, renounced their allegiance. With 
 this latter calamity Nero abandoned all hope ; and when he learned 
 that the senate had declared him an enemy to the country, too cow- 
 ardly to kill himself, he sought death by the hands of one of his 
 freedmen, from whom he received a mortal wound. (A. D. 68.) 
 
 19. During the greater part of the reign of Nero the empire en- 
 joyed, in general, a profound peace ; the only wars of importance 
 being with the Parthians and the Britons. The former were defeated 
 and reduced by Cor' bulo, the greatest general of his time. This 
 virtuous Roman had kept his faith even to Nero ; but the only re- 
 ward which he received from the emperor for his victories, was 
 death. In Britain, Suetonius Paulinus defeated the inhabitants in 
 several battles, and penetrating into the heart of the country, de- 
 stroyed the consecrated groves and altars of the druids. a After- 
 wards the Iceni, b under the command of their queen Boadic' ea, re- 
 volted, burned London, then a flourishing Roman colony, reduced 
 many other settlements, and put to death, in all, seventy thousand 
 Romans. Suetonius avenged their fate in a decisive battle, in 
 which eighty thousand Britons are said to have perished. The heroic 
 Boadic' ea, rather than submit to the victor, put an end to her life by 
 poison. During the reign of Nero also occurred the famous rebel- 
 lion in Judea, and the beginning of the war which resulted in the 
 destruction of the Jewish nation. 
 
 20. With the death of Nero the reign of the Julian family, or 
 the true line of the Caesars, ended ; although six succeeding empe- 
 rors are included in what are usually styled " the twelve Caesars." A 
 series of sanguinary wars, arising from disputed succession, followed. 
 
 a. The druids were the priests or ministers of religion among the ancient Gauls and Britons. 
 Their chief seat was an island of the Irish Sea, now called Anglesey, which was taken by Sue- 
 tonius after a fanatical resistance. This general cut down the groves of the druids, and nearly 
 exterminated both the priests and their religion. The druids believed in the existence of one Su- 
 preme Being, a state of future rewards and punishments, the immortality of the soul, and its 
 transmigration through different bodies. They possessed some knowledge of geometry, natural 
 philosophy, and astronomy ; they practiced astrology, magic, and sooth-saying ; they regarded 
 the mistletoe as the holiest object in nature, and esteemed the oak sacred ; they abhorred im- 
 ages ; they worshipped fire as the emblem of the sun, and in their sacrifices often iiumola 
 ted human victims. They exercised great authority in the government of the State, appointed 
 the highest officers in the cities, and were the chief administrators of justice. On the intro- 
 duction of Christianity into Britain, the druidical order gradually ceased. 
 
 b. The Tctni inhabited the country on the eastern coast of England. Their chief town wa 
 a place now called Caister, about three miles from Norwich. 
 
 c. London, anciently Londinium, was in existence, as a town of the Trinobantea, before tha 
 invasion if Julius Czsar.
 
 196 MODERff HISTORY. [PART II, 
 
 At first Galba, then in the seventy- third year of his are, a man of un- 
 blemished personal character, was universally acknowl- 
 *' edged emperor ; but he soon lost the attachment of the 
 soldiery by his parsimony, while the influence of injudicious favorites 
 led him into unseasonable severities for the suppression of the enor- 
 mous vices of the times. Several revolts against his authority 
 rapidly succeeded each other, and finally, Otho, who had been among 
 the foremost to espouse his cause, finding that Galba refused to 
 nominate him for his successor, procured a revolt of the Praetorian 
 guards in his own favor. After a brief struggle in the streets of 
 Rome, Galba was slain, after a reign of only seven months. 
 
 21. While the unworthy Otho, a passive instrument in the hands 
 of a licentious soldiery, remained at Rome, with the title of emperor, 
 
 immersed in pleasures and debaucheries, Vitel' lius, a 
 man more vulgar and vicious than Otho, was proclaimed 
 
 emperor by the legions under his command on the German frontier. 
 
 A brief but sanguinary struggle followed, and Otho, having sustained 
 
 a defeat in the north of Italy, fell by his own hand, after a reign of 
 
 ninety-five days. 
 
 22. Vitel' lius, entering Rome in triumph, ordered more than a 
 hundred of the praetorian guards to be put to death ; but he en- 
 
 x. VITEL'- deavored to win the favor of the populace by large 
 LIDS. donations of provisions, and expensive games and enter- 
 tainments. His personal character was cruel and contemptible. 
 Under the most frivolous pretences the wealthy were put to death, 
 and their property seized by the emperor ; and in less than four 
 months, as stated by historians, this bloated and pampered ruler ex- 
 pended on the mere luxuries of the table a sum equal to about 
 seven millions sterling. But while wallowing in the indulgence of 
 the most debasing appetites, he was startled by the intelligence that 
 the legions engaged in the Jewish war in Syria had declared their 
 general, Vespasian, emperor, and were already on their march 
 towards Rome. 
 
 23. As province after province submitted to Vespasian, and his 
 generals rapidly overcame the little opposition they encountered, 
 Vit il' lius in dismay would have abdicated his authority, but the 
 Praetorian guards, dreading the strict discipline of Vespasian, com- 
 pelled the wretched monarch to a farther resistance. Rome how- 
 ever easily fell into l.be hands of the con^uerors ; and Vitel' lius, 
 having retained the sceptre only eight months, was ignominiously
 
 CHAP. I.] ROMAN HISTORY. 197 
 
 put to death, and his mangled carcass thrown into the Tiber, amid 
 the execrations of the same fickle multitude that had so recently 
 welcomed his accession to power. (A. D. Dec. 69.) 
 
 24. During several months, Domitian, the second son of Vespasian, 
 ruled at Rome in the absence of his father, taking part with the 
 contending factious, committing many acts of cruelty, and already 
 exhibiting the passions and vices which characterized his later years ; 
 but at length the arrival of the monarch elect restored tranquillity 
 and diffused universal joy. (A. D. 70.) Vespasian was XL VESPA- 
 universally known and respected for his virtues, and his SIAN - 
 mild and happy reign restored to the distracted empire some degree 
 of its former prosperity. He improved the discipline of the army, 
 enlarged the senate to its former numbers, and revived its authority, 
 reformed the courts of law, and enriched Rome with many noble 
 buildings, of which the Colosseum still remains, in much of ita 
 ancient grandeur the pride and glory of his reign. 
 
 25. Three years before his accession to the throne, Vespasian had 
 been sent into Judea by Nero, (A. D. 67,) at the head of sixty 
 thousand men, to conduct the war against the Jews, who xn . JEWISH 
 had revolted against the Roman power. They had VfAS ~ 
 been driven to rebellion by the execution and tyranny of Floras the 
 Roman governor, and having once taken up arms they were so 
 strangely infatuated as to believe that, although without a regular 
 army, or munitions of war of any kind, they could resist the united 
 force of the whole Roman empire. The war thus commenced was 
 one of extermination, in which mercy was seldom asked or shown by 
 either party 
 
 26. While the war raged around Jerusalem, and city after city 
 was taken, and desolated by the massacre of its inhabitants, there 
 were three hostile factions i:i Jerusalem, afterwards reduced to two, 
 holding possession of different parts of the city, and wasting their 
 strength in cruel conflicts with each other. When Vespasian depart- 
 ed for Rome to assume the royal authority, he left the conduct of 
 the war to his sou Titus, who soon after commenced the siege of Je- 
 rusalem, during the time of the feast of the passover, when the city 
 was crowded with people from all Judea. Titus expected that al- 
 though Jerusalem was defended by six hundred thousand men, such a 
 multitude gathered within the walls of a poorly-provisioned city, 
 would occasion a famine that would soon make a surrender inevitable. 
 
 27. Although the Jews were promised liberty and safety if they
 
 198 MODERN HISTORY. [?AKT IL 
 
 would surrender the city ; and Josephus, the future historian of hia 
 country, who had been taken prisoner by the Romans, was sent to 
 expostulate with them on the folly of longer resistance; yet they re- 
 jected all warnings and counsel with scorn and derision ; and although 
 the opposing Jewish factious were embroiled in a civil war, with a 
 strange infatuation both declared their resolution to defend the city 
 to the very last, confident that God would not permit his temple and 
 city to fall before the heathen. 
 
 28. The horrors of the siege surpassed all that the pen can de- 
 scribe. When the public granaries had become empty the people 
 were plundered of their scanty stores, -so that the famine devoured by 
 houses and by families. At length no table was spread, nor regular 
 meal eaten in Jerusalem. People bartered all their wealth for a meas- 
 ure of corn, and ate it in secret, uncooked, or snatched half baked from 
 the coals. They were often compelled, by torture, to discover their 
 food, or were still more cruelly treated if they had eaten it. Wives 
 would steal the last morsel from their husbands, children from 
 parents, mothers from children ; and there were instances of dead 
 infants being eaten by their parents ; so that the ancient prophecy, 
 in which Moses had described the punishments of the unbelieving 
 Jews, was fulfilled. 8 - 
 
 29. At length the dead accumulated so fast that they were left un- 
 buried, and were cast off the walls by thousands down into the val- 
 leys ; and as Titus went his rounds, and saw the putrefying masses, 
 he wept, and, stretching his hands to heaven, called God to witness 
 that this was not his work ! By slow degrees one wall after another 
 was battered down ; but so desperate was the defence of the Jews 
 that it was three months after the lower city was taken before the 
 Romans gained possession of the temple, and, in its destruction, com- 
 pleted the fall of Jerusalem. (A. D. 70.) Titus would have saved 
 the noble edifice, but was unable to restrain the rage of his soldiery, 
 and the Temple was burnt. 
 
 30. Josephus computes the number of his countrymen who 
 perished during the war at more than one million three hundred 
 thousand, with a total of more than a million prisoners. Thousands 
 of the latter were sent to toil in the Egyptian mines ; but such were 
 their numbers that they were offered for sale " till no man would 
 buj them," and Ihen they were sent into different provinces as pre- 
 
 a. Deut. xxviii. 50, 57.
 
 CHIP. I] ROMAN HISTORY. 199 
 
 sents, wjer.} they were consumed by the sword, or by wild beasta in 
 the amphitheatres. With the destruction of the holy city and ita 
 famous temple Israel ceased to be a nation, and thus was inflicted 
 the doom which the unbelieving Jews invoked when they cried out, 
 " His blood be on us and on our children." 
 
 31. Britain had been only partially subdued prior to the reign of 
 Vespasian, but during the two years after the fall of Jerusalem ita 
 conquest was completed by the Roman governor Julius Agric' ola, 
 who was ju&tly celebrated for his great merits as a general and a states- 
 man. Carrying his victorious arms northward he defeated the Brit- 
 tons in every encounter, penetrated the forests of Caledonia, 1 and 
 established a chain of fortresses between the Friths of Clyde and 
 Forth, which marked the utmost permanent extent of the Roman 
 dominion in Britain. The fastnesses of the Scottish highlands were 
 ever too formidable to be overcome by the Roman arms. By an 
 enlightened policy Agric' ola also taught the Britons the arts of 
 peace, introduced laws and government among them, induced them 
 to lay aside their barbarous customs, taught them to value the con- 
 veniencies of life, and to adopt the Roman language and manners. 
 The life of Agric' ola has been admirably written by Tac' itus, the 
 historian, to whom the former had given his daughter in marriage. 
 
 32. On the death of Vespasian (A. D. 79) his son Titus succeeded 
 to the throne. Previous to his accession the general opinion of 
 the people was unfavorable to Titus, but afterwards his 
 
 conduct changed, and he is celebrated as a just and 
 humane ruler ; and so numerous were his acts of goodness, that his 
 grateful subjects bestowed upon him the honorable title of " benefac- 
 tor of the human race." During his brief reign of little more than 
 two years, Rome and the provinces were in the enjoyment of peace 
 and prosperity, only disturbed by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius," 
 
 1. Ancient Caledonia comprehended that portion of Scotland which lay to the north of the 
 Forth and the Clyde.. A frith is a narrow passage of the sea, or the opening of a river into 
 the sea. Agric' ola penetrated north as far as the river Tay. (See Map No. XVI.) 
 
 2. Mount Vesuvius, ten miles south-east from the city of Naples, is the only active volcano 
 at present existing on the European continent. Its extreme height is three thousand eight 
 hundred and ninety feet about two-fifths of that of JEl'na. Its first known eruption occurred 
 on the 24th of August, A. D. 79, when Herculaneum and Pompeii were buried under showers 
 of volcanic ashes, sand, stones, and lava, and the elder Pliny lost his life, being suffocated by 
 the sulphurous vapor as he approached to behold the wonderful phenomena. It is related that, 
 such was the immense quantity of volcanic ashes thrown out during this eruption, the whole 
 country was involved in pitchy darkness ; and that the ashes fell in Egypt, Syria, and various 
 parts of Asia Minor. Since the destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii there have been 
 nearly fifty authenticated eruptions of Vesuvius.
 
 200 MODERN HISTORY. [PART 11 
 
 which caused the destruction of Herculaneum' and Pompeii,* 
 (A. D. 79,) and by a great fire at Home, which was followed by a 
 pestilence. (A. D. 80.) 
 
 33. Domitian succeeded his brother without opposition, (A. D. 81,) 
 although the perfidy and cruelty of his character were notorious. 
 
 X1V . He began his reign by an affectation of extreme virtue, 
 DOMITIAN. k^ was unable long to disguise his vices. There was 
 no law but the will of the tyrant, who caused many of the most 
 eminent senators to be put to death without even the form of trial ; 
 and when, by his infamous vices, and the openness of his debaucheries, 
 he had sunk, in the eyes of his subjects, to the lowest stage of 
 degradation, he caused himself to be worshipped as a god, and ad- 
 dressed with the reverence due to Deity. Both Jews and Christians 
 were persecuted by him, and thousands of them put to death because 
 they would not worship his statues. This is called in ecclesiastical 
 history the second great persecution of the Christians, that under 
 Nero being the first. 
 
 34. It was in the early part of this reign that Agric' ola com- 
 pleted the conquest of Britain ; but on the whole the reign of Domi- 
 tian was productive of little honor to the Roman arms, as in Moe 'sia, J 
 and Dacia, 4 in Germany, 6 and Pannonia, the Romans were defeated, 
 
 1. Herculaneum was close to the sea, south of Vesuvius, and eight miles south-east from the 
 city of Naples. Little is known of it except its destruction. It was completely buried under 
 a shower of ashes, over which a stream of lava flowed, and afterwards hardened. So changed 
 was the aspect of the whole country, and even the outlines of the coast, that all knowledge of 
 the city, beyond its name, was soon lost, when, in 1713, after a concealment of more than six- 
 teen centuries, accident led to the discovery of its ruins, seventy feet below the surface of the 
 ground. 
 
 2. Pompeii was fifteen miles south-east from Naples, and was not buried by lava, but by 
 ashes, sand, and stones only, and at a dej>th of only twelve or fifteen feet above the buildings. It 
 bas been excavated much more extensively than Herculaneum disclosing the city walls, 
 streets, temples, theatres, the forum, baths, monuments, private dwellings, domestic utensils, 
 &c., the whole conveying the impression of the actual presence of a Roman town in all the 
 circumstantial reality of its existence two thousand years ago. " The discovery of Pompeii has 
 thrown a strong and steady light on many points connected with the private life and economy 
 of the ancients, that were previously involved in the greatest obscurity." The small number 
 of skeletons discovered in Herculaneum and Pompeii render it quite certain that most of the 
 inhabitants saved themselves by flight. 
 
 3. JJfffi' sia, extending north to the Danube and eastward to the Euxine, corresponded to the 
 present Turkish provinces of Ser' via and Bulgiiria. (Map No. IX.) 
 
 4. Dacia was an extensive frontier province north of the Danube, extending east to the 
 Euxine. It embraced the northern portions of the present Turkey, together with Transylvania 
 and a part of Hungary. ( Map No. IX.) 
 
 5. The word Germania was employed by the Romans to designate all the country east of the 
 Rhine and north of the Danube as fur as the German ocean and the Baltic, and eastward at 
 far as Surma.Ua and Dacia. The limits of Germany, as a Roman p to vince, were very indefinite. 
 (Map No. IX.)
 
 CHAP. I.] ROMAN HISTORY. 201 
 
 and whole provinces lost. In Mce' sia, Domitian himself was several 
 times defeated, yet he wrote to the senate boasting of extraordinary 
 victories, and the servile body decreed him the honors of a triumph. 
 In a similar manner other triumphs were decreed him, which caused 
 Pliny the younger to say that the triumphs of Domitian were always 
 evidence of some advantages gained by the enemies of Rome. 
 
 35. At length, after a reign of fifteen years, Domitian was assassi- 
 nated at the instigation of his wife, who accidentally discovered that 
 her own name was^m the fatal list of those whom the emperor designed 
 to put to death. The soldiers, whose pay he had increased, and with 
 whom he often shared his plunder, lamented his fate ; but the senate 
 ordered his name to be struck from the Roman annals, and obliter- 
 ated from every public monument. 
 
 36. The death of Domitian closes the reign of those usually de- 
 nominated " the twelve Caesars," only three of whom, Augustus, 
 Vespasian, and Titus, died natural deaths. Julius Csesar fell under 
 the daggers of conspirators in the very senate-house of Rome. Ti- 
 berius, at the instigation of Calig' ula, was smothered on a sick bed : 
 Calig' ula was murdered in his own palace while attending a theatri- 
 cal rehearsal : Claudius was poisoned, at the instigation of his own 
 wife, by his favorite physician : Nero, by the aid of his freedrnan, 
 committed suicide to avoid a public execution : the aged Galba was 
 slain in the Roman forum, in a mutiny of his guards : Otho, on 
 learning the success of his rival Vitel' lius, committed suicide : Vi- 
 tel' lius was dragged by the populace through the streets of Rome, 
 put to death with tortures, and his mangled carcass thrown into the 
 Tiber ; and Domitian was killed in his bed-chamber by those whom 
 he had marked for execution. The heart sickens not more at the 
 recital of these murders than of the crimes that prompted them ; 
 and thus far the history of the Roman emperors is little else than 
 a series of constantly recurring scenes of violence and blood. 
 
 37. But as we pass from the city of Rome into the surrounding 
 Roman world, we almost forget the revolting scenes of the capital in 
 view of the still-existing power and majesty of the Roman empire 
 an empire the greatest the world has ever seen and still great in 
 the remembrance of the past, and in the influences which it has be- 
 queathed to modern times. While the emperors were steeped in the 
 grossest sensuality, and Rome was a hot-bed of infamy and crime, 
 the numerous provincial governments were generally administered 
 with ability and success ; and the glory of the Roman arms was 
 
 T*
 
 202 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 sustained in repelling the barbarous hordes that pressed upon the 
 frontiers. But national valor cannot compensate for the want of 
 national virtue : the soul that animated the Republic was dead ; the 
 spirit of freedom was gone ; and national progress was already be- 
 ginning to give place to national decay. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 ROHAN HISTORY FROM THE DEATH OF DOMITIAX, A. D. 96, TO THE ESTAB 
 
 L1SI1MKNT OF MILITARY DESPOTISM, AFTEtt THE MU2.DER OF 
 
 ALEXANDER SEVE' BUS, A. D. 235 = 139 YEARS 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. NERVA. His character, reign, and death. [Urn' bria.] 2. TRAJAN. His 
 character, and character of his reign. Remarkable words attributed to him. 3. His wars 
 and conquests. His death. [Ctes' iphon. Trajan's column.] 4. Persecutions of the Christians 
 during the reign of Trajan. The proverbial goodness of Trajan's character. 5. Accession of 
 ADRIAN. His peaceful policy. General administration of the government. His visit to the 
 provinces. 6. Revolt of the Jews. Results of the Jewish war. Defences in Britain. [Solway 
 Frith. River Tyne.] 7. Doubtful estimate of Adrian's character and reign. His ruling 
 passions. 8. Accession of TITUS ANTOKI' NUS. 9. His character, and the character of his 
 reign. 10. MARCUS AURE'LIUS ANTONI' NUS. Verus associated with him. 11. War with the 
 Parthians. With the Germans. Remarkable deliverance of the Roman army. 12. Character 
 of the five preceding reigns. The evils to which an arbitrary government is liable. Illustrated 
 in the annals of the Roman emperors. 13. Accession of COM' MODUS. Beginning of his gov- 
 ernment. 14. The incident which decided his fluctuating character. His subsequent wicked- 
 ness. 15. His debaucheries and cruelties. His death. 16. The brief reign of PKRTINAX. 17. 
 Disposal of the empire to DID' ins JULIA' NUS. 18. Dangerous position of the new ruler. 19. 
 His competitors. [Dalmatia.] Successes of SEPTIM' lus SEVE' RUS, and death of Julianus. 
 20. Dissimulation of Severus. He defeats Niger at Issus in Asia. His continued duplicity. 
 Overthrow and death of Albinus. [Lyons.] 21. Subsequent reign of Severus. His last illness 
 and death. [York.] 22. CARACAL' LA and Geta. Death of the latter. Character, reign, and 
 death of Caracal' la. Brief reign of MACRI' NUS. 23. Accession of ELAOAB.V' LUS. 24. His 
 character and follies. Circumstances of his death. 25. ALEXANDER SEVE' RUS. His attempts 
 to reform abuses. Character of his administration. His death. His successor. 
 
 1. Domitian was succeeded by Nerva, who was a native of Urn'- 
 
 bria, 1 but whose family orignally came from Crete. He was the 
 
 first Roman emperor of foreign extraction, and was chosen 
 
 I. XERVA. 
 
 by the senate on account of his virtues. His mild and 
 equitable administration forms a striking contrast to the sanguinary 
 rule of Domitian ; but his excessive lenity, which was his greatest 
 fault, encouraged the profligate to persevere in their accustomed 
 
 1. Urn' bria was a country of Italy east of Etruria and north of the Sabine territory. 
 The ancient Urn' brians were one of the oldest and most numerous nations of Italy. (Mat 
 No. VIU.
 
 CHAP. I.] ROMAN HISTORY. 203 
 
 peculations At length the excesses of his own guards convinced 
 him that the government of the empire required greater energy than, 
 he possessed, and he therefore wisely adopted the excellent Trajan 
 as his successor, and made him his associate in the sovereignty. 
 Nerva soon after died, (A. D. 98,) in the seventy-second year of his 
 age, having reigned but little more than sixteen months. 
 
 2. Trajan, who was by birth a Spaniard, proved to be one of 
 Rome's best sovereigns ; and it has been said of him that he was 
 equally great as a ruler, a general, and a man. After 
 
 he had made a thorough reformation of abuses, he re- 
 stored as much of the free Roman constitution as was consistent 
 with a monarchy, and bound himself by a solemn oath to observe the 
 laws ; yet while he ruled with equity, he held the reins of power 
 with a strong and steady hand. No emperor but a Trajan could have 
 used safely the remarkable words attributed to him, when, giving a 
 sword to the prefect of the Praetorian guards, he said, " Take this 
 sword and use it ; if I have merit, for me ; if otherwise, against me." 
 
 3. In his wars, Trajan, commanding in person, conquered the 
 Daciaris, after which he passed into Asia, subdued Armenia, took 
 Seleucia and Ctes'iphon, 1 the latter the capital of the Parthian 
 kingdom, and sailing down the Tigris displayed the Roman standards 
 for the first time on the waters of the Persian Gulf, whence he passed 
 into the Arabian peninsula, a great part of which he annexed to the 
 Roman empire. But while he was thus passing from kingdom to 
 kingdom, emulating the glory of Alexander, and dreaming of new 
 conquests, he was seized with a lingering illness, of which he died 
 in Cilicia, in the twentieth year of his reign. (A. D. 117.) His 
 ashes were conveyed to Rome in a golden urn, and deposited under 
 the famous column which he had erected to commemorate his Dacian 
 victories.* 
 
 1. Ctes' iphon was a city of Parthia, on the eastern bank of the Tigris, opposite to and three 
 miles distant from Seleucia. 
 
 a, Trajan's column, which is still standing, is the most beautiful mausoleum ever erected to 
 departed greatness. Its height, not including the base, which is now covered with rubbish, is 
 one hundred and fifteen feet ten inches ; and the entire column is composed of twenty-four 
 great blocks of marble, so curiously cemented as to seem one entire stone. It is ascended on 
 the inside by one hundred and eighty-five winding steps. The noblest ornament of this pillar was 
 a bronze statue of Trajan, twenty-five feet in height, representing him in a coat of arms, holding 
 in the left hand a sceptre, and in the right a hollow globe of gold, in which, it has been assert- 
 ed, the ashes of the emperor were deposited. The column is now surmounted by a statue of 
 St. Peter, which Sixtus V. had the bad taste to substitute in place of that of Trajan. On the 
 external face of the column is a series of bas-reliefs, running in a spiral course up the shaft, 
 representing Trajan's victories, and containing two thousand five hundred human figures.
 
 204 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 4. The character of Trajan, otherwise just and amiable, is stained 
 by the approval which he gave to the persecution of Christians in 
 the eastern provinces of the empire ; for although he did not directly 
 promote that persecution, he did little to check its progress, and al- 
 lowed the enemies of the Christians to triumph over them. Still, 
 the goodness of his character was long proverbial, inasmuch as, m 
 later times, the senate, in felicitating the accession of a new emperor 
 were accustomed to wish that he might surpass the prosperity of 
 Augustus and the virtue of Trajan. 
 
 5. Whether Trajan, in his last moments, adopted his relative 
 Adrian as his successor, or whether the will attributed to him wag 
 forged by the empress Plotina, is a doubtful point in history ; but 
 
 Adrian succeeded to the throne with the unanimous dec- 
 laration of the Asiatic armies in his favor, whose choice 
 was immediately ratified by the senate and people. His first care 
 was to make peace with the surrounding nations ; and in order to 
 preserve it he at once abandoned all the conquests made by his pre- 
 decessor, except that of Dacia, and bounded the eastern provinces 
 by the river Euphrates. He diminished the military establisamentg, 
 lowered the taxes, reformed the laws, and encouraged literature. He 
 also passed thirteen years in visiting all the provinces of the empire, 
 inspecting the administration of government, repressing abuses, and 
 erecting and repairing public edifices. 
 
 6. During his reign occurred another war with the Jews, who, in- 
 censed at the introduction of Roman idolatry into Jerusalem, were 
 excited to revolt by an impostor who called himself Bar-C6chab, (the 
 son of a star,) and who pretended to be the expected Messiah. Two 
 hundred thousand devoted followers soon flocked to the Jewish stand- 
 ard, and for a time gained important advantages ; but Severus, after- 
 wards emperor, being sent against them, in a sanguinary war of three 
 years' duration he accomplished the almost total destruction of the Jew- 
 ish nation. More than five hundred thousand of the misguided Jew3 
 are estimated to have fallen by the sword during this period ; and 
 those Yfh j survived were " scattered abroad among all the nations of the 
 earth." In Britain, Adrian repaired the frontier fortresses of Agric'- 
 ola as a bulwark against the Caledonians, and erected a second wall, 
 from the Soiway Frith 1 to the Tyne, 3 remains of which are still visible. 
 
 1. Solway Frith, the north-eastern arm of the Irish sea, divides England from Scotland. 
 (Map No. XVI.) 
 
 2. The Tyne, an important river in the north of England, enters the seq on tl e eastern coast, 
 it the southern extremity of Northumberland countj. (Map No. XVI.)
 
 CHAP I.] ROMAN HISTORY 205 
 
 7. Although the general tenor of the reign of Adrian deserved 
 praise for its (.quity and moderation, yet his character had some 
 dark stains upon it ; and the Romans of a later age doubted whether 
 he should be reckoned among the good or the bad princes. He al- 
 lowed a severe persecution of the Jews and Christians ; he was 
 jealous, suspicious, superstitious, and revengeful; and although in 
 general he was a just and able ruler, he was at times an unrelenting 
 and cruel tyrant. His ruling passions were curiosity and vanity ; 
 and as they were attracted by different objects, his character as- 
 sumed the most opposite phases. 
 
 8. Adrian, a short time previous to his death, (A. D. 138,) adopted 
 for his successor, Titus Antonimis, surnamed Pius, on 1V . TITUS 
 condition that the latter should associate with him, in ANTOS1/ NUS - 
 the empire, Marcus Aurelius, and the youthful Verus. Antoninus, 
 immediately after his accession, gave one of his daughters in mar- 
 riage to Marcus Aurelius, afterwards called Marcus Aurelius Anto- 
 ninus ; but while he associated the worthy Aurelius in the labors of 
 government, he showed no regard for the profligate Verus. 
 
 9. During twenty-two years Antoninus governed the Roman world 
 with wisdom and virtue, exhibiting in his public life a love of re- 
 ligion, peace and justice ; and in his private character goodness, 
 amiability, and a cheerful serenity of temper, without affectation or 
 vanity. His regard for the future welfare of Rome is manifest in 
 the favor which he constantly showed to the virtuous Aurelius : the 
 latter, in return, revered the character of his benefacter, loved him 
 as a parent, obeyed him as a sovereign, and, after his death, regulated 
 his own administration by the example and maxims of his predecessor. 
 
 1C. On the death of Antoninus, (A. D. 161,) the senate, distrust- 
 ing Verus on account of his vices, conferred the sover- 
 eignty upon Marcus Aurelius alone ; but the latter im- AURELIUS 
 mediately took Verus as his colleague, and gave him his ANTONI >rus - 
 daughter in marriage ; and notwithstanding the great dissimilarity 
 in the characters of the two emperors, they reigned jointly ten 
 years, until the death of Verus, (A. D. 171,) without any disagree- 
 ment , for Verus, destitute of ambition, was content to leave the 
 weightier affairs of government to his associate. 
 
 11. Although Aurelius detested war, as the disgrace of humanity 
 and its scourge, yet his reign was less peaceful than that of his pre 
 deccssor ; for the Parthians overran Syria ; but they were eventually 
 repulsed, and some of their own cities captured. During five years
 
 206 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 Aurelius, in person, conducted a war against the German tribes, 
 without once returning to Rome. During the German war occurred 
 that remarkable deliverance of the emperor and his army from 
 dan"-ei , which has been related both by pagan and Christian writers. 
 It is said that the Romans, drawn into a narrow defile, where they 
 could neither fight nor retreat, were on the point of perishing by 
 thirst, when a violent thunder-storm burst upon both armies, and 
 the lightning fired the tents of the barbarians and broke up their 
 jamp, while the rain relieved the pressing wants of the Romans. 
 Many ancient fathers of the Church ascribed the seasonable shower 
 to the prayers of the Christian soldiers then serving in the imperial 
 army ; and we are told by Eusebius that the emperor immediately 
 gave to their division the title of the " Thundering Legion," and 
 henceforth relaxed his severity towards the Christians, whose perse- 
 cution he had before tolerated. 
 
 12. The reigns of Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, and the two Atonines, 
 comprised a happy period in the annals of the Roman empire 
 These monarchs observed the laws, and the ancient forms of civil 
 administration, and probably allowed the Roman people all the free- 
 dom they were capable of enjoying. But under an arbitrary gov- 
 ernment there is no guarantee for the continuance of a wise and 
 equitable administration ; for the next monarch may be a profligate 
 sensualist, an imbecile dotard, or a jealous tyrant ; and he may 
 abuse, to the destruction of his subjects, that absolute power which 
 others had exerted for their welfare. The uncertain tenure by which 
 the people held their lives and liberties under despotic rule, is fully 
 illustrated in the dark pictures of tyranny which the annals of the 
 Roman emperors exhibit. The golden age of Trajan and the An- 
 tonines had been preceded by an age of iron ; and it was followed 
 by a period of gloom, of whose public wretchedness, the shortness, 
 and violent termination, of most of the imperial reigns, is sufficient proof. 
 
 13. Com' modus, the unworthy son of Aurelius, succeeded to the 
 vi. COM.'- throne on the death of his father, (A. D. 180,) amidst 
 
 MODUS. the acclamations of the senate and the armies. During 
 three years, while he retained his father's counsellors around him, he 
 ruled with equity and moderation ; but the weakness of his mind 
 and the timidity of his disposition, together with his natural indo- 
 lence, rendered him the slave of base attendants ; and sensual indul- 
 gence and crime, which others had taught him, finally degenerated 
 into a habit ani became the ruling passions of his soul.
 
 CHAP I] ROMAN HISTORY. 207 
 
 14. A fatal incident decided his fluctuating character, and sud- 
 denly developed his dormant cruelty and thirst for blood. In an 
 attempt to assassinate him, the assailant, aiming a blow at him with 
 a dagger, exclaimed, " the senate sends you this." The menace pre- 
 vented the deed ; but the words sunk deep into the mind of Com'- 
 modus, and kindled the utmost fury of his nature. It was 'found 
 that the conspirators were men of senatorial rank, who had been in- 
 stigated by the emperor's own sister. Suspicion and distrust, fear 
 and hatred, were henceforth indulged by the emperor towards the 
 whole body of senators : spies and informers were encouraged ; 
 neither virtue nor station afforded any security; and when Com'- 
 modus had once tasted human blood, he became incapable of pity or 
 remorse. He sacrificed a long list of consular senators to his wanton 
 suspicion, and took especial delight in hunting out and exterminating 
 all who had been connected with the family of the Antonines. 
 
 15. The debaucheries of Com' modus exceeded, in extravagance 
 and iniquity, those of any previous Roman emperor. He was 
 averse to every rational and liberal pursuit, and all his sports were 
 mingled with cruelty. He cultivated his physical, to the neglect of 
 his mental powers ; and in shooting with the bow and throwing the 
 javelin, Rome had not his superior. Delighting in exhibiting to the 
 people his superior skill in archery, he at one time caused a hundred 
 lions to be let loose in the amphitheatre ; and as they ran raging 
 around the arena, they successively fell by a hundred arrows from 
 the royal hand. He fought in the circus as a common gladiator, and, 
 always victorious, often wantonly slew his antagonists, who were less 
 completely armed than himself. This monster of folly and wicked- 
 ness was finally slain, (A. D. 193,) partly by poisoning and partly by 
 strangling, at the instigation of his favorite concubine Marcia, who 
 accidentally learned that her own death, and that of several officers 
 of the palace, had been resolved upon by the tyrant. 
 
 16. On the death of Com' modus the throne was offered to Per ti- 
 nax, a senator of consular rank and strict integrity, who VII PER ' T1 . 
 accepted the office with extreme reluctance, fully aware NAX - 
 
 of the dangers which he incurred, and the great weight of responsi- 
 bility thrown upon him. The virtues of Per' tinax secured to him 
 the love of the senate and the people ; but his zeal to correct a'buses 
 provoked the anger of the turbulent Praetorian soldiery, who pre- 
 ferred the favor of a tyrant to the stern equality of the laws ; and
 
 208 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 after a reign of three months, Per' tinax was slain in the imperial 
 palace by the same guards who had placed him on the throne. 
 
 17. Amidst the wild disorder that attended the violent death of 
 the emperor, the Praetorian guards proclaimed that they would dis- 
 pose of the sovereignty of the Roman world to the highest bidder ; 
 and while the body of Per' tinax remained unburied in the streets 
 
 viii. DID' ics of Rome, the prize of the empire was purchased by a 
 
 JULIA' NUS. va i a an <l wealthy old senator, Did' ius Julianus, who, 
 
 repairing to the Praetorian camp, outbid all competitors, and actually 
 
 paid to each of the soldiers, ten thousand in number, more than two 
 
 hundred pounds sterling, or nearly nine millions of dollars in all. 
 
 18. The obsequious senate, overawed by the soldiery, ratified the 
 unworthy negotiation ; but the Praetorians themselves were ashamed 
 of the prince whom their avarice had persuaded them to accept ; the 
 citizens looked upon his elevation with horror, as a lasting insult to 
 the Roman name ; and the armies in the provinces were unanimous 
 in refusing allegiance to the new ruler, while the emperor, trembling 
 with the dangers of his position, found himself, although on the 
 throne of the world, scorned and despised, without a friend, and 
 even without an adherent. 
 
 19. Three competitors soon appeared to contest the throne with 
 Julianus, Clodius Albinus, who commanded in Britain, Pescen'- 
 
 ix. SEPTIM'- nius Niger in Syria, and Septim'ius Severus in Dal- 
 rus SEVERUS. m^tia 1 and Pann6nia. The latter, by his nearness to 
 Rome, and the rapidity of his marches, gained the advance of his 
 rivals, and was hailed emperor by the people : the faithless Praeto- 
 rians submitted without a blow, and were disbanded ; and the senate 
 pronounced a sentence of deposition and death against the terror- 
 stricken Julianus, whose anxious and precarious reign of sixty-five 
 days was terminated by the hands of the common executioner. 
 
 20. While Severus, employing the most subtle craft and dissimu- 
 lation, was flattering Albinus in Britain with the hope of being asso- 
 ciated with him in the empire, he rapidly passed into Asia, and after 
 several engagements with the forces of Niger completely defeated 
 them on the plains of Issus, where Alexander and Darius had long 
 before contended for the sovereignty of the world. Such was the 
 
 1. Dalmdtia, anciently a part of Illyr' icum, and now the most southern province of the 
 Austrian empire, comprises a long and narrow territory on the eastern snore of the AJriaf le. 
 After the division of the Roman provinces under Con'stantine and Thecdosius, Dalmalii be 
 came cne of the most important parts of the empire.
 
 CHAP. L] ROMAN HISTORY. 200 
 
 duplicity of Severus, that oven in the letter in which he announced 
 the victory to Albums, he addressed the latter with the most friendly 
 fcalutations, and expressed the strongest regard for his welfare, while 
 at the same time he intrusted the messengers charged with the letter 
 to desire a private audience, and to plunge their dagger to the heart 
 of his rival. It was only when the infamous plot was detected 
 Albinus awoke to the reality of his situation, and began io \ 
 vigorous preparations for open war. This second contest for empire: 
 was decided against Albinus in a most desperate battle near Lyons, 1 
 in G-aul, (A. D. 197,) where one hundred and fifty thousand Roman" 
 are said to have fought on each side. Albinus was overtaken in 
 flight, and slain ; and many senators and eminent provincials suf- 
 fered death for the attachment which they had shown to his cause. 
 
 21. After Severus had obtained undisputed possession of the em- 
 pire, her governed with mildness : considering the Roman world as 
 his property, he bestowed his care on the cultivation and improve- 
 ment of so valuable an acquisition, and after a reign of eighteen 
 years he could boast, with a just pride, that he received the empire 
 oppressed with foreign and domestic wars, and left it established in 
 profound, universal, and honorable peace. In his last illaess, Severus 
 deeply felt and acknowledged the littleness of human greatness. Born 
 in an African town, fortune and merit had elevated him from an 
 humble station to the first place among mankind ; and now, satiated 
 with power, and oppressed with age and infirmities, all his pros- 
 pects in life were closed. " He had been all things," he said, " and 
 all was of little value." Calling for the urn in which his ashes were 
 to be inclosed, he thus moralized on his decaying greatness. " Little 
 urn, thou shalt soon hold all that will remain of him whom, the 
 world could not contain." He died at York, 2 in Britain, (A. D. 211,) 
 having been called into that country to repress an insurrection of the 
 Caledonians. 
 
 1. Lyons, called by the Romans Lug-danum, is situated at the confluence of the rivers 
 Rhone and Saone. The Roman town was at the foot of a hill on the western bank of tin? 
 Rhone. Caesar conquered the place from the Gauls: Augustus made it the capital of a prov- 
 ince ; and, being enlarged by succeeding emperors, it became one of the principal cities of the 
 Roman world. It ia now the principal manufacturing town of France, containing a population 
 of about two hundred thousand inhabitants. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. York, called by tbe Romans Ebor' acum, is situated on the river Ouse, one hundred and 
 sever. ty miles N. N. west from London. It was the capital of the Roman province, and next 
 to London, the most important city in the island. It was successively the residence of Adrian, 
 Kevfemj, Geta and Caracal' la, Coustan' tins Chlurus, Con' stantine the Great, &.(.:. The modarn 
 city can still show many vestiges of Roman power and magnificence. ConstaV tius Chlorus, 
 the father of Con' stantine the Great, :lied here. (JV/,tj> No. XVI.) 
 
 14
 
 210 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 22. Severus had left the empire to his two sons Caracal' la and 
 x CAIIA- Geca, but the former, whose misconduct had imbittered 
 
 CAL' LA. ti ie } as t jays O f hi s father, soon after his accession slew 
 his brother in his mother's arms. His character resembled that of 
 Com' modus in cruelty, but his extortions were carried to a far 
 greater extent. After the Roman world had endured his tyranny 
 nearly six years, he was assassinated while in Syria, at the instiga- 
 xi MACIU'- ti n f Macrinus, the captain of the guards, (A. D. 217,) 
 M;S. w } 10 succeeded to the throne ; but after a reign of four- 
 teen months, Macrinus lost his life in the struggle to retain his 
 power. 
 
 23. Bassianus, a youth of fourteen, and a cousin of Caracal' la, 
 had been consecrated, according to the rites of the Syrian worship, 
 to the ministry of high-priest of the sun ; and it was a rebellion of 
 the Eastern troops in his favor that bad overthrown the power of 
 Macrinus. Although these events occurred in distant Syria, yet the 
 Roman senate and the whole Roman world received with servile 
 
 xn ELAGA- submission the emperors whonl the army successively 
 BA' LUS. offered them. As priest of the sun Bassianus adopted 
 the title of Elagabalus, a and on his arrival at Rome established 
 there the Syrian worship, and compelled the grandest personages of 
 the State and the army to officiate in the temple dedicated to the 
 Syrian god. 
 
 24. The follies, gross licentiousness, boundless prodigality, and 
 cruelty of this pagan priest and emperor, soon disgusted even the 
 licentious soldiery, the only support of his throne. He established 
 a senate of women, the subject of whose deliberations were dress 
 and etiquette ; he even copied the dress and manners of the female 
 sex, and styling himself empress, publicly invested one of his officers 
 with the title of husband. His grandmother Moe' sa, foreseeing that 
 the Roman world would not iong endure the yoke of so contemptible 
 a monster, artfully persuaded him, in a favorable moment of fond- 
 ness, to adopt for his successor his cousin Alexander Severus ; yet, 
 soon after, Elagabalus, indignant that the affections of the army 
 were bestowed upon another, meditated the destruction of Severus, 
 but was himself massacred by the indignant Praetorians, who dragged 
 his mutilated corpse through the city, and threw it into the Tiber, 
 while the senate publicly branded his name with infamy. (A. D. 222.) 
 
 a. A name derived from two Syrian words, ela a god, and gabal to form : signifying tLa 
 fiooning, or plastic god, a proper and even happy epithet for the sun. Gibbon, i. 83.
 
 CHAP. I] ROMAN HISTORY. 211 
 
 25. At tlv> ag4 of seventeen Alexander Severus was raised to the 
 throne by the Praetorian guards. He proved to be a xnj ALEX _ 
 wise, energetic, and virtuous prince : he relieved the ANDER SE- 
 provinces of the oppressive taxes imposed by his prede- 
 cessors, .and restored the dignity, freedom, and authority of the 
 senate; but his attempted reformation of the military order served 
 only to inflame the ills it was meant to cure. His administration of 
 the government was an unavailing struggle against the corruptions 
 of the age ; and after many mutinies of his troops his life was at 
 length sacrificed, after a reign of fourteen years, to the fierce discon- 
 tents of the army, whose power had now increased to a height so 
 dangerous as to obliterate the faint image of laws and liberty, and 
 introduce the sway of military despotism. Max' imin, the instigator 
 of the revolt, was proclaimed emperor. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 ROMAN HISTORY FROM THE ESTABLISHMENT OF MILITARY DESPOTISM, AFTER THE 
 
 MURDER OF ALEXANDER SEVE' RUS, A. D. 235, TO THE SUBVERSION OF THE 
 
 WESTERN EMPIRE OF THE ROMANS, A. D. 476 = 241 YEARS. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. Earliest account of the Thracian MAX' IMIN. 2. His origin. His history 
 down to the death of Alexander Severus. [The Goths. Alini.] 3. Max' imin proclaimed 
 emperor by the army. Commencement of his reign. 4. GOR' DIAN. PUPIE' NUS AND BALBI'- 
 NUS. Death of Max' imin. The SECOND GOR' DIAN. 5. German and Persian wars. 6. Sapor, 
 the Persian king. Death of Gor' dian, and accession of PHILIP THE ARABIAN. 7. Insurrections 
 and rebellions. DE'CIUS proclaimed emperor, and death of Philip. [Verona.] 8. War with 
 the Goths, and death of Decius. Reign of CALLUS ./EMILIA' NUS. Accession of VALE' RIAN. 
 9. Worthy character of Valerian. Ravages of the barbarians. Spain, Gaul, and Britain. 
 The Persians. [The Franks. The Aleman'ni. Lombardy.] 10. Valerian taken prisoner. 
 His treatment. GALLIE' NUS. 11. Odenatus, prince of Palmyra. He routs the Persians. 
 [Palmyra.] 12. Numerous competitors for the throne. 13- Death of Gallienus, and accession 
 of CLAUDIUS. [Milan.] 14. Character, reign, and death of Claudius. [Sir' mium.] 15. QUIN- 
 TiLius. 16. Th6 reign of AURE' LIAN. His wars. Zenobia. Character of Aurelian. His 
 death. [Tibur. Byzan' tium.] 17. An interregnum. Election of TACITUS. His reign and 
 death. [Bos' porus.] 18. FLO' RIAN. The reign, and death, of PROBUS. [Sarmatia. Van'- 
 dals.] 19. Reign of CA' RUS. His character, and death. NUMK' RIAN AND CARI' NUS. 20. Su- 
 perstition, and retreat, of the Roman army in Persia. Character of Carinus, and death of 
 Numerian. 21. Carinus marches against Diocletian. His death. DIOCLE' TIAN acknowledged 
 emperor. His treatment of the vanquished. 
 
 22. The reign of Diocletian, an important epoch. [Copts and Abyssmians.] 23. Division 
 of the im[*rial authority. 24. The rule of MAXIM' IAN. [Nicomedia.] Of his colleague 
 Constau' tiua. . Countries ruled by Diocletian, and his colleague Galerius. 25. Important 
 events of the reign of Diocletian. The insurrection in Britain. 26. Revolt in Egypt ancl 
 northe'T) Africa. [Bu.-iris and Cop'tos. The Moors/ --27. The war with Persia. [Antioch.
 
 212 MODERN HISTORY. [PAR/ II 
 
 Kurdistan.]- -28. Persecution of the Christians. Diocletian's edict against thtm. 29. Results, 
 and effects of this persecution. 30. Diocletian and .Maxim' ian lay down the sceptre, and retire 
 to private life. GALE' RIUS AND CONSTAN' TIUS acknowledged sovereigns. Discord and con- 
 fusion. 31. Death of Constan' tins. Cos' STANTINE proclaimed emperor. Six competitors for 
 the throne. Death of Galerius. 32. Conversion of Con' stantine, and triumph of Christianity. 
 33. Most important events in the reign of Con' stantine. The choice of a new capital. 34. 
 Removal of the seat of government to Byzan' tium, and the changes that followed. Con' slan- 
 tine divides the empire among his three sons and two nephews. His death. 35. Sixteen years 
 of Civil wars. CONSTAN' TIUS II. becomes sole emperor. His reign of twenty-four years. His 
 iath. [The Saxons.] 30. JULIAN THE APOSTATE. His character. Hostility to the Ch- 
 37. His efforts against Christianity. The result. 33. His attempt to rebuild Jerusalem. 39. 
 Causes of the suspension of the work. 40. Julian's invasion of Persia. His death. 31. The 
 trief rcigu of Jo' VIAN. 42. VALENTIN' IAN elected emperor. Associates his brother VA' LENS 
 with him. Final division of the empire. The two capitals. Rome. 
 
 43. BARBARIAN INROADS. Picts and Scots. 44. Death of Valentin' ian, and westward pro- 
 gress of the Huns. The Vis' igoths are allowed to settle in Thrace. 45. The Os' trogoths cross 
 the Danube in arms. The two divisions raise the standard of war. Death of Valens. 
 [Adriauople.] 40. GRA' TIAN emperor of the West. THEODO' sius emperor of the East. The 
 Goths. Many of them settle in Thrace, Phrygia, &c. 47. Death of Gratian. VALENTIN' IAN 
 II. His death. Theodosius sole emperor. Death of Theodosius. Division of the empire be- 
 tween HONO' RIUS AND ARCA 1 Dius. 48. Civil wars. AL' ARIC THE GOTH ravages Greece, and 
 then passes into Italy. [Julian Alps.] 49. Honorius is relieved by Stir icho. [As' ta Pollen'- 
 tia.] Rome saved by Stil' icho. 50. Raven' na becomes the capital of Italy. Deluge of bar- 
 barians. [Raven' na. Van' dais. Suevi. Burgun' dians.] 51. Italy delivered by Stil' icho. 
 [Florence.] 52. Stil' icho put to death. Massacre of the Goths, and revolt of the Gothic 
 soldiers. 53. Rome besieged by Al' aric. His terms of ransom. 54. The terms finally agrer J 
 upon. Rejected by Honorius. [Tuscany.] Al' aric returns and reduces Rome. 55. Pillage 
 of Rome. Al'aric abandons Rome. His death and burial. 56. The Goths withdraw from 
 Italy. The Vis' igoths in Spain and Gaul. Saxons establish themselves in England. 57. The 
 Van' dais in Spain and Africa. VALENTIN' IAN 111. CONQUESTS OF AT'TILA. [Andalusia. 
 The Huns. Chalons. Venetian Republic.] 58. Extinction of the empire of the Huns. Situ- 
 ation of the Roman world at this period. Rome pillaged by the VAN' DALS, A. D. 455. 59. 
 Avi' TVS. MAJO' RIAN. 00. SEVE' RUS. Van' dal invasions. Expedition against Carthage. 61. 
 Revolutionary changes. Demands of the barbarians, and SUBVERSION OF THE WESTERN 
 EMPIRE. [Her' uli.] 
 
 1. ' Thirty-two years before the murder of Alexander Severus, 
 the emperor Septim' ius Severus, returning from his Asiatic expe- 
 dition, halted in Thrace to celebrate with military games the birth- 
 day of his younger son Geta. Among the crowd that flocked o 
 behold their sovereign was a young barbarian of gigantic stature, 
 who earnestly solicited, in his rude dialect, that he might be allowed 
 
 to contend for the prize of wrestling. As the pride of 
 i. MAX'IMIX. .. . .. ... .. i ,, 
 
 discipline would have been disgraced m the overthrow of 
 
 a Roman soldier by a Thracian peasant, he was matched with the 
 stoutest followers of the camp, sixteen of whom he successively laid 
 on the ground. His victory was rewarded by some trifling gifts, and 
 a permission to enlist in the troops. The next day tLa happy bar- 
 barian was distinguished above a crowd of recruits, dancing and ex- 
 ulting after the fashion of his country. As soon as as he perceived 
 that he had attracted the emperor's notice, he ran up to his horse,
 
 CHAP. L] ROMAN HISTORY. 213 
 
 and followed him on foot, without the least appearance of fatigue, in 
 a long and rapid career. " Thracian," said Severus, with astonish- 
 ment, " art 'thou disposed to wrestle after thy race ?" " Most wil- 
 lingly, sir," replied the unwearied youth, and almost in a breadth 
 overthrew seven of the strongest soldiers in the army. A gold collar 
 was the prize of his matchless vigor and activity, and he was imme- 
 diately appointed to serve in the horse-guards, who always attended 
 on the person of the sovereign. ' a 
 
 2. Max'imin, for that was the name of the Thracian, was de- 
 scended from a mixed race of barbarians, his father being a Goth, 1 
 and his mother of the nation of the Alani. 3 Under the reign of the 
 first Severus and his son Caracal' la he held the rank of centurion ; 
 but he declined to serve under Macrinus and Elagabalus. On the ac- 
 cession of Alexander he returned to court, and was promoted to vari- 
 ous military offices honorable to himself and useful to the nation, 
 but, elated by the applause of the soldiers, who bestowed on him the 
 names of Ajax and Hercules, and prompted by ambition, he con- 
 spired against his benefactor, and excited that mutiny in which the 
 latter lost his life. 
 
 3. Declaring himself the friend and advocate of the military order, 
 
 1. The Oaths, a powerful northern nation, who acted an important part in the overthrow of 
 the Roman empire, were probably a Scythian tribe, and came originally from Asia, whence 
 they passed north into Scandinavia. When first known to the Romans, a large division of 
 their nation lived on the northern shores of the Euxine. About the middle of the third 
 century of our era they crossed the Dnics' ter, aud devastated Dacia and Thrace. The emperor 
 Decius lost his life in opposing them; after which his successor Gal' lus induced them by 
 money, to withdraw to their old seats on the Dnies' ter. (See p. 215.) Soon after this period 
 the Goths appear in two grand divisions ; the Os' trogoths, or Eastern Goths, passing the 
 Euxine into Asia Minor, and ravaging Bythin' ia ; and the Vis' igoths, or Western Goths, 
 gradually pressing upon the Roman provinces along the Danube. About the year 375, the 
 Huns, coming from the East, fell upon the Os' trogoths, and drove them upon the Vis' igoths, 
 who were then, living north of the Danube. A vast multitude of the latter were permitted by 
 the emperor Valens to settle in Mce' sia, and on the waste lands of Thrace ; but being soon after 
 joined by their Eastern brethren, they raised the standard of war, carried their ravages to the very 
 gates of Constantinople, and killed Valens in battle. (See p. 228.) It was AT aric, king of the 
 Vis' igoths, who plundered Rome in the beginning of the fifth century. (See p. 231.) The Vis' i- 
 goths afterwards passed into Spain, where they founded a dynasty which reigned nearly three 
 centuries, and was finally conquered by the Moors, A. D. 711. In the meantime the Os' trogotha 
 had been following in the path of their brethren, and in the year 493 their great king TheocT oric 
 defeated Odoacer, and seated himself on the throne of Italy. (See p. 239.) The Gothic kingdom 
 lasted only till the year 534, when it was overthrown by Nar' ses, the general of Justin' iun. 
 (See p. 241.) From this period the Goths no longer occupy a prominent place in history, 
 except in Spain. 
 
 2. The Jll&ni, likewise a Scythian race, when first known occupied the country between the 
 Volga and the Don. Being conquered,, eventually, by the Huns, most ot the Alans united 
 with their conquerors, and proceeded with them to invade the limits of the Gothic empire of 
 Italy. 
 
 a. Gibbon, i. 96.
 
 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 Max' imin was unanimously proclaimed emperor by the applauding 
 legions, who, now composed mostly of peasants and barbarians of 
 the frontiers, knowing no country but their camp, and no science but 
 that of war, and discarding the authority of the senate, looked upon 
 themselves as the sole depositaries of power, as they were, in reality, 
 the real masters of the Roman world. Max' imin commenced his 
 reign by a sanguinary butchery of the friends of the late monarch ; 
 but his avarice and cruelty soon provoked a civil war, and raised up 
 against him several competitors for the throne. 
 
 4. At first the aged and virtuous Gor'dian, pro-consul of Africa, 
 
 was declared sovereign by the legions in that part of the 
 Roman world, but he persisted in refusing the dangerous 
 honor until menaces compelled him to accept the imperial title. At 
 Rome the news of his election was received with universal joy, and 
 confirmed by the senate; but two months after his accession he 
 perished in a struggle with the Roman governor of Mauritania, who 
 still adhered to Max' imin. Two senators of consular dignity, Pu- 
 PUPIE- pienus, (sometimes called Max' imus) and Balbinus, were 
 NUS AND then declared emperors by the senate ; and soon after, 
 <IS ' Max' imin, while on his march from Pannonia to Rome, 
 was slain in his tent by his own guards. (A. D. 238.) Only a few 
 iv. SECOND days later both Pupienus and Balbinus were slain in 
 GOR' DIAN. a mutiny of the troops. The youthful Gor' dian, grand- 
 son of the former Gor' dian, was then declared emperor. 
 
 5. During these rapid changes in the sovereignty of the Roman 
 world, the empire was involved in numerous foreign wars, which 
 gradually wasted its strength and resources, and hastened its down- 
 fall. On the north, the German nations, and other barbarian tribes, 
 almost constantly harassed the frontier provinces ; while in the east 
 the Persians, after overthrowing the Parthian empire, and establish- 
 ing the second or later Persian empire under the dynasty of the 
 Sassan' idae, (A. D. 226,) commenced a long series of destructive 
 wars against the Romans, with the constant object of driving the 
 latter from Asia. 
 
 6. At the time of the accession of the second Gor' dian to the 
 sovereignty of the Roman empire, Sapor, the second prince of the 
 Sas' savrid dynasty, was driving the Romans from several c f their 
 Asiatic provinces. The efforts of Gor' dian, who went in pei son to 
 protect the provinces of Syria, were partially successful but whih?
 
 CBAP. L] LOMAN HISTORY. 215 
 
 the youthful conqueror was pursuing his advantages, he was supplanted 
 in the affections of his army by Philip the Arabian, the y PH1LIP 
 prefect or commander of the Praetorian guards, who caused THE 
 his monarch and benefactor to be slain, (A. D. 244.) ARABIAN - 
 
 7. It is not surprising that the generals of Philip were disposed 
 to imitate the example of their master, and that insurrections and 
 rebellions were frequent during his reign. At length a rebellion 
 having broken out in Pannonia, Decius was sent to sup- 
 
 .,,,,.,,. , . , , VI. DECIUS. 
 
 press it, when he himself: was proclaimed emperor by 
 the fickle troops, and compelled, by the threat of instant death, to 
 submit to their dictation. Philip immediately marched against De- 
 cius, but was defeated and slain near Verona. 1 (A. D. 249.) 
 
 8. Several monarchs now succeeded each other in rapid succession. 
 Decius soon fell in battle with the Goths, (A. D. 251,) large num- 
 bers of whom during his" reign first crossed the Danube, and deso- 
 lated the Roman provinces in that quarter. Gal' lus, a yn. GAI/- 
 general of Decius, being raised to the throne, concluded LCS - 
 
 a dishonorable peace with the barbarians, and renewed a violent per- 
 secution of the Christians, which had been commenced by Decius 
 As new swarms of the barbarians crossed the Danube, the pusillani 
 mous emperor, seemed about to abandon the defence of VIII . ^MIM 
 the monarchy, when ^Smilianus, governor of Pannonia A'NUS. 
 and Mce' sia, unexpectedly attacked the enemy and drove them back 
 into their own territories. His troops, elated by the victory, pro- 
 claimed their general emperor on the field of battle ; and Gal' lus 
 was soon after slain by his own soldiers. In three mouths Ix . VALE- 
 a similar fate befel ^Imilianus, when Valerian, governor EIAN - 
 of Gaul, then about sixty years of age, a man of learning, wisdom, 
 and virtue, was advanced to the sovereignty, not by the clamors of 
 the army only, but by the unanimous voice of the Roman world. 
 
 9. Valerian possessed abilities that might have rendered his admin 
 istration happy and illustrious, had he lived in times more peaceful, 
 and more favorable for tl^e display and appreciation of virtue ; but 
 his reign had not only a most deplorable end, but was marked, through- 
 out, with nothing but confusion and calamities. At this time the 
 Goths, who had already formed a powerful nation on the lower Dan- 
 
 i. Verona, a large and flourishing Roman city of Cisalpine Gaul, still retains its ancient name. 
 It is situated on both sides of the river Adige, sixty-four miles west from Venice. The great glory 
 of Ver6na is its amphitheatre, one of the noblest existing monuments of the ancient Romans, 
 and, excepting the Colosseum at Rome, the largest extant edifice of its class. It is suppO8<sd 
 to have been capable of accommodating twenty thousand spectators. Map No. XVII.)
 
 216 MODERN HISTORY. [PART H. 
 
 ubo and the northern coasts of the Black Sea, ravaged the Roman do- 
 minions on their borders, and penetrating into the interior of Greece, 
 or Achaia, destroyed Ar' gos, Corinth, and Athens, by fire and by 
 the sword: the Franks, 1 who had formed a kingdom on the lower 
 Rhine, began to be formidable : the Aleman' ni 2 broke through their 
 boundaries, and advanced into the plains of Lorn' bardy 3 : Spain, 
 Gaul, and Britain, were virtually torn away from the empire, and 
 .vorned by independent chiefs; while in the East, the Persians, 
 In- their monarch Sapor, fell like a mountain torrent upon Syria 
 :iiid Cappadocia, and almost effaced the Roman power from Asia. 
 
 10. Valerian in person led the Roman army against the Persians, 
 but, penetrating beyond the Euphrates, he was surrounded and taken 
 prisoner by Sapor, who is accused of treating his royal captive with 
 wanton and unrelenting cruelty, using him as a stepping-stone when 
 he mounted on horseback, and at last causing him, after nine years 
 of captivity, to be flayed alive, and his skin to be stuffed in the form 
 
 x. GALLIE- f * ne living emperor dyed in scarlet in mockery of 
 NUS - his imperial dignity, and preserved as a trophy in a 
 temple of Persia. Gallienus, the unworthy son of Valerian, receiv- 
 ing the news of his father's captivity with secret joy and open in- 
 difference, immediately succeeded to the throne. (A. D. 259.) 
 
 11. At the time when nearly every Roman town in Asia had sub- 
 mitted to Sapor, Odenatus, prince of Palmyra, 4 who was attached 
 
 1. The Franks, or " Freemen," were a confederation of the rudest of the Germanic tribes, 
 and were first known to the Romans as inhabiting the numerous islets formed by the mouth of 
 the Rhine ; but they afterwards crossed into Gaul, and, in the latter part of u,e fifth century, 
 under their leader Clovis, laid the foundation of the French monarchy. (See also p. 255.) 
 
 2. The Mcmari ni, or " all men," that is, men of all tribes, were also a German confederacy, 
 situated on the northern borders of Switzerland. They were finally overthrown by Clovis, after 
 which they were dispersed over Gaul, Switzerland, and northern Italy. 
 
 3. I.om' bardy embraced most of the great plain of northern Italy watered by the Po and its 
 tributaries. 
 
 4. Palmyra, "The ancient "Tadmor in the wilderness" built by king Solomon, (2. (Jhron. 
 viii. 4,) was situated in an oasis of the Syrian desert, about one hundred and forty miles 
 north-east from Damascus. The first notice we have of it in Roman history is at the com- 
 
 lencement of the wars with the Parthians, when it was permitted to maintain a state of inde- 
 pendence and neutrality between the contending parties. Being on the caravan route from the 
 coast of Syria to the regions of Mesopotamia, Persia, and India, it was long the principal em- 
 porium of commerce between the Eastern and Western worlds a city of merchants and lao- 
 tors, whose wealth is still attested by the number and magnificence of its ruins. After the 
 victories of Trajan had established the unquestionable preponderance of the Roman arms, it 
 became allied to the empire as a free State, and was greatly favored by Adrian and the Anto- 
 -ines, during whose reigns it attained its greatest splendor. Odenatus maintained its glory, 
 and for his defeat of the Persians the Roman senate conferred on him the title of Augustus, 
 wiu associated him wltn Gallienus in the empire; but his queen and successor, tho 
 famous Zeuobia, broke the alliance with the imbecile Gallienus, annexed Egypt to her do-
 
 CHAP. I] ROMAX HISTORY. 217 
 
 to the Roman interest, desirous at least to secure the forbearance of 
 the conqueror, sent Sapor a magnificent present of camels and mer- 
 chandise, accompanied with a respectful, but not servile, epistle ; but 
 the haughty monarch ordered the gifts to be thrown into the Euphra- 
 tes, and returned for an answer that if Odenatus hoped to mitigate 
 his punishments he must prostrate himself before the throne of 
 Sapor with his hands tied behind his back. The Palmyrean prince 
 reading his fate in the angry message of Sapor, resolved to meet tho 
 Persian in arms. Hastily collecting a little army from the villages 
 of Syria, and the tents of the desert, he fell upon and routed the 
 Persian host, seized the camp, the women, and the treasures of Sa- 
 por, and in a short time restored to the Romans most of the prov- 
 inces of which they had been despoiled. 
 
 12. The indolence and inconstancy 7 of Gallienus soon raised up a 
 host of competitors for the throne, generally reckoned thirty in all, 
 although the number of actual pretenders did not exceed nineteen. 
 Among these was Odenatus the Palmyrean, to whom the Roman 
 senate had intrusted the command of the Eastern provinces, after 
 associating him with Gallienus. Of all these competitors, several 
 of whom were models of virtue, two only were of noble birth, and 
 not one enjoyed a life of peace, or died a natural death. As one 
 after another was cut off by the arms of a rival, or by domestic 
 treachery, armies and provinces were involved in their fall. During 
 the deplorable reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, the contentions of 
 the imperial rivals, and the arms of barbarians, brought the empire 
 to the very brink of ruin. 
 
 13. Gallienus, after a reign of nine years, was murdered while he 
 was besieging one of his rivals in Mediolanum ; J (Milan, 
 
 A. D. 268 ;) but before his death he had appointed Mar- 
 cus Aurelius Claudius, a general of great reputation, to succeed him, 
 and the choice was confirmed by the joyful acclamations of the army 
 and the people. 
 
 minions, and assumed the title of " Augusta, Queen of the East." The emperor Aurelian 
 inarched against the ill-fated Palmyra with an irresistible force ; the walls of the city were 
 razed to the ground ; and the seat of commerce, of arts, and of Zeuobia, gradually sunk into 
 an obscure town, a trifling fortress, and, at length, a miserable Arab village. 
 
 1. Jllediol&num, now Milan, was a city of Cisalpine Gaul, one hundred and fifty miles west 
 from Venice, situated in a beauti.ul plain between two small streams the Olona and Lambra, 
 which unite at San Angelo and form a northern tributary of the Po. Mediolanum was a 
 nexed to the Roman dominions by Scipio Nasica, 191 B. C. A good specimm of ancient Ko- 
 man architecture may still be seen at JHan, being a range of sixteen beautiful Corinthian 
 ft >:umiis, with their architrave, before the church at San Lorenzo. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 K
 
 218 MODERN HISTORY. [?AKT II 
 
 14. A succession of better princes now restored for awhile the de- 
 caying energies of the empire. Claudius merited the confidence 
 which had been placed in his wisdom, valor, and virtue; and hi? 
 early death was a great misfortune to the Roman world. After 
 having overthrown and nearly destroyed an army of three hundred 
 and twenty thousand Goths and Van' dais, who had invaded the em- 
 pire by the way of the Bos' porus, Claudius was cut off by a pesti- 
 lence at Sir' rnium, 1 as he was making preparations to march against 
 the famous Zenobia, the " Queen of the East," and the widow and 
 successor of Odenatus. 
 
 15. Quintil'ius, the brother of Claudius, was proclaimed emperor 
 xii. QUIN- by tne acclamations of the troops ; but when he learned 
 
 TIL' IDS. that the great army of the Danube had invested Aurelian 
 with imperial power, he sunk into despair, and terminated his life 
 after a reign of seventeen days. 
 
 16. The reign of Aurelian, which lasted only four years and nine 
 xm. AUEE- months, was filled with memorable achievements. After 
 
 LIAN. a bloody conflict, he put an end, by treaty, to the Gothic 
 war of twenty years' duration; he chastised and drove back the 
 Aleman' ni, who had traced a line of devastation from the Danube 
 to the Po ; he recovered Gaul, Spain, and Britain ; and passing into 
 Asia at the head of a large army, he destroyed the proud monarchy 
 which Zenobia had erected there, and led that unfortunate, but heroic 
 princess, captive to Rome. Being presented with an elegant villa 
 at Tibur, 2 the Syrian queen insensibly sunk into a Roman matron 
 and her daughters married into the noblest families of the empire. 
 With great courage and superior military talents, Aurelian possessed 
 many private virtues ; but their influence was impaired by the stern 
 ness and severity of his character. He fell in a conspiracy of his 
 officers near Byzan' tiurn, 3 while preparing to carry on a war with 
 Persia. (A. D. March, 275.) 
 
 1. Sir' mium was an important city in the south-eastern part of Pannonla, on the northern 
 side of the river Save. Its ruins may be seen near the town of Mitrovitz, in Austrian Slavonia. 
 
 2. Tibur, now Tivoli, (tee-vo-le) was situaleu at the cascades of the A' nio, now the Tever- 
 6ne, eighteen miles north-east from Rome. Its ancient inhabitants were called the Tiburtint. 
 The declivities in the vicinity of Tibur were anciently interspersed with splendid villas, the 
 favorite residences of the reflned and luxurious citizens of Rome, among which may be men- 
 Honed those of Sallust, Maecenas, Tibul' lus, Virus, At' ticus, Cassius, Brutus, &c. Here Virgil 
 and Horace elaborated their immortal works. Although the temples and theatres of ancient 
 Tibur have crumbled into dust, its orchards, its gardens, and its cool recesses, still bloom and 
 flourish in unfading beauty. (Map No. X.) 
 
 3. Byzan' tium, now Constantinople, a celebrated city of Thrace on the western shore of the 
 TUracian Bos' po-us is supposed to hav<> been founded by a Dcriau colony from Meg' ara, led
 
 CHAP. L] ROMAN HISTORY. 5219 
 
 17. On the death of Aurelian, a generous and unlooked-for dis- 
 interestedness was exhibited by the army, which modestly referred 
 the appointment of a successor to the senate. Tor six months the 
 senate persisted in declining an honor it had so long been unaccus- 
 tomed to enjoy ; and during this period the Koman world remained 
 without a sovereign, without a usurper, and without a sedition. At 
 length the senate yielded to the continual request of the 
 
 XIV TACITUS 
 
 legions, and elected to the imperial dignity Marcus 
 Claudius Tacitus, a wealthy and virtuous senator, who had already 
 passed his seventy-fifth year. Tacitus, after enacting some wise 
 laws, and restoring to the senate its ancient privileges, proceeded to 
 join the army, which had remained assembled on the Bos'porus 1 for 
 the invasion of Persia ; but the hardships of a military life, and the 
 cares of government, proved too much for his constitution, and he 
 died in Cappadocia, after a reign of little more than six months. 
 (A. D. Sept., 275.) 
 
 18. Florian, a brother of Tacitus, showed himself unworthy to 
 reign, by assuming the government without even con- xv FLO >. 
 suiting the senate. His own soldiers soon after put him BIAN - 
 
 to death, while in the meantime the Syrian army proclaimed their 
 leader, Probus, emperor. The latter proved to be an XVI PEO '_ 
 excellent sovereign and a great general ; and in the wars BUS - 
 which he carried on with the Franks, Aleman'ni, Sannatians," Goths, 
 and Van' dais,* he gained greater advantages than any of his prede- 
 cessors. In the several battles which he fought, four hundred thou- 
 sand of the barbarians fell ; and seventy cities opened their gates to 
 
 by Byias a Thracian prince, about the middle of the seventh century before the Christian era. 
 It was destroyed by the Persians in the reign of Darius : it resisted successfully the arms of 
 Philip of Mac' edon : during the reign of Philip H. it placed itself under Roman sway : it was 
 destroyed, and afterwards rebuilt, by Septim' ius Severus ; and in the year 328 A. D., Con' stan- 
 tine made it the capital of the Roman empire. On the subjugation of the western empire by 
 the barbarians, A. D. 476, it continued to be the capital of the eastern empire. It was taken 
 by the crusaders in the year 12:14 ; and in 1453 it fell into the hands of the Turks, when the 
 last remnant of the Roman empire was finally suppressed. (Map No. III.) 
 
 1. The Bos' porus, (corrupted by modern orthography to Bos' phorus,) is the strait which 
 connects the Euxine or Black Sea, with the Propou' tis or Sea of Marmora. The length of this 
 remarkable channel is about seventeeen miles, with a width varying from half a mile to two 
 miles. (Map No. VII.) 
 
 2. Ancient Sarm&t.ia extended from the Baltic Sea and the Vis' tula to the Caspian Sea and the 
 Volga. European Sarmatia embraced Poland, Lithuania, Prussia, and a part of Russia. 
 Asiatic Sarmatia comprised the country between the Caspian Sea and the river Don. 
 
 3. The Van' dais were a people of Germany, and are supposed to have been of Gothic origin. 
 They formed one of the three divisions of the great Slavonian race ; viz., Vandals, Aa' tea, 
 and Slavonians proper. The Slavonian language is the stem from which have issued the 
 Russian Polish, Bohemian, &c.
 
 220 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 him. After he had secured a general peace by his victories, he em 
 ployed his armies in useful public works ; but the soldiers disdained 
 such employment, and while they were engaged in draining a marsh 
 near Sir' mium, in the hot days of summer, they broke out into a 
 furious mutiny, and in their sudden rage slew their emperor. (A. D. 
 282.) 
 
 19. The legions next raised Carus, prefect of the Praetorian 
 xvii. guards, to the throne. He was full of warlike ambition. 
 
 CA' uus. ail( j t ue desire of military glory, and seems to have held 
 a middle rank between good and bad princes. He signalized the 
 beginning of his reign by a memorable defeat of the Sarniatians in 
 Illyr' icum, sixteen thousand of whom he slew in battle. He then 
 marched against Persia, and had already carried his victorious arms 
 beyond the Tigris, when he was killed in his tent, as was 
 NUMERIAN generally believed by lightning. (A. D. 283.) Nume- 
 A * D rian, one of the sons of Carus, who had accompanied his 
 father in his eastern expedition, and Carinus his elder 
 brother, who had been left to govern Rome, were immediately ac- 
 knowledged emperors by the troops. 
 
 20. On the death of Carus, the eastern army, superstitiously re- 
 garding places or persons struck by lightning as singularly devoted 
 to the wrath of heaven, refused to advance any farther ; and the Per- 
 sians beheld with wonder the unexpected retreat of a victorious 
 army. While Carinus remained at Rome, immersed in pleasures, 
 and acting the part of a second Com' modus, the virtuous Numerian 
 perished by assassination. The army of the latter then chose for 
 his successor Diocletian, the commander of the domestic body guards 
 of the late emperor. (A. D. Dec., 285.) 
 
 21. Carinus, being determined to dispute the succession, marched 
 with a large army against Diocletian, whom he was on the point of 
 defeating in a desperate battle on the plains of Margus, a small city 
 of Moe' sia, when he was slain by one of his own officers in revenge 
 for some private wrong. The army of Carinus then acknowledged 
 
 six. DIOCLE- Diocletian as emperor. He used his victory with mild- 
 TIAN. nesSj aju^ contrary to the common practice, respected 
 the lives and fortunes of his late adversaries, and even continued in 
 their stations many of the officers of Carinus. 
 
 22. The reign of Diocletian is an important epoch in Roman 
 history, as it was one of long duration and general prosperity, and is
 
 CHAP. I.] ROMAS HISTORY. 22 1 
 
 the beginning of the division of the Roman world into the Eastern 
 and Western empire. The accession of Diocletian also marks a new 
 chronological era, called the " era of Diocletian," or, " the era of 
 martyrs," which was long recognized in the Christian church, and is 
 still used by the Copts and Abyssinians. 1 
 
 23. The natural tendency of the eastern parts of the empire to 
 become separated from, the western, together with the difficulties cf 
 ruling singly over so many provinces of different nations and diverge 
 interests, led Diocletian to form the plan of dividing the imperial 
 authority, and governing the empire from two centres, although the 
 whole was still to remain one. He therefore first took as a colleague 
 his friend and fellow soldier Maxim' ian ; but still the weight of the 
 public administration appearing too heavy, the two sovereigns took 
 each a subordinate colleague, to whose name the title of Caesar was 
 prefixed. 
 
 24. Maxim' ian made Milan his capital, while Diocletian held his 
 court at Nicomedia, 2 in Asia Minor. Maxim' ian ruled ^ MAXIM'- 
 over Italy and Africa proper ; while his subordinate col- *-' 
 league, Coustan' tius, administered the government of Gaul, Spain, 
 Britain, and Mauritania. Diocletian reserved, for his personal su- 
 pervision, nearly all the empire east of the Adriat' ic, except Panno- 
 nia and Moe' sia, which he conferred upon his subordinate colleague 
 Galerius. Each of the four rulers was sovereign within his own 
 jurisdiction; but each was prepared to assist his colleagues with 
 counsel and with arms; while Diocletian was regarded as the father 
 and head of the empire. 
 
 25. The most important events of the reign of Diocletian were 
 the insurrection of Carausius in Britain, a revolt in Egypt and 
 throughout northern Africa, the war against the Persians, and a long- 
 continued persecution of the Christians. During seven years, Carau- 
 sius, the commander of the northern Roman fleet, ruled over Britain, 
 and diffused beyond the columns of Hercules the terror of his name. 
 He was murdered by his first minister Alec' tus ; but the latter, 
 soon after, was defeated and slain in battle by Constan' tius ; and 
 after a separation of ten years, Britain was reunited with the empire. 
 
 26. The suppression of a formidable revolt in Egypt was accom- 
 
 1. The Copts are Christians descendants of the ancient Egyptians, as distinguished from thu 
 Arabians and other inhabitants of modern Egypt. The Abyssinians inhabitants of Abyssinia, 
 in eastern Africa, profess Christianity, but it has little influence over their conduct. 
 
 2. Jficomedia was in Bithyn' ia. at the easte-n extremity of the Propon' tis, or Sea of Mar- 
 mora. The modern Is- Mid occupies the site of the ancient city.
 
 222 MODERN HISTORY. [TAET IL 
 
 plished by Diocletian himself, who took a terrible vengeance upon 
 Alexanlria, and utterly destroyed the proud cities of Busiris and 
 Cop' tos. 1 In the meantime a confederacy of five Moorish" nations 
 attacked all the Roman provinces of Africa, from the Nile westward 
 to Mount Atlas, but the barbarians were vanquished by the arms of 
 Maxim' ian. 
 
 27. Next commenced the war with Persia, which was carried on 
 by Galerius, although Diocletian, taking his station at An' tioch, 3 pre- 
 pared and directed the military operations. In the first campaign 
 the Roman army received a total overthrow on the very ground 
 rendered memorable by the defeat and death of Crassus. In a second 
 campaign Galerius gained a complete victory by a night attack ; and 
 by the peace which followed, the eastern boundary of the Roman 
 world was extended beyond the Tigris, so' as to embrace the greater 
 part of Carduchia, the modern Kurdistan'. 4 
 
 28. The triumphs of Diocletian are sullied by a general perse- 
 cution of the Christians (the tenth and last), which he is said to 
 have commenced at the instigation of Galerius, aided by the artifices 
 of the priesthood. (A. D. 303.) The famous edict of Diocletian 
 against the Christians excluded them from all offices, ordered their 
 churches to be pulled down, and their sacred books to be burned, and 
 led to a general and indiscriminate massacre of all such as professed 
 the name of Jesus. 
 
 1. Four cities of Egypt bore the name of Busiris. The one destroyed by Diocletian was in 
 the Thebais, or southern Egypt, generally called Upper Egypt. Cop' tos was likewise In 
 Upper Egypt, east of the Nile. Its favorable situation for commerce caused it again to arise 
 after its destruction by Diocletian. 
 
 2. The Moors, whose name is derived from a Greek word (Mauros) signifying "dark," "ob- 
 scure," are natives of the northern coast of Africa, or, more properly, of the Roman Mauri- 
 tania. The Moors were originally from Asia, and are a people distinct from the native Arabs, 
 Berbers, &c. The modern Moors are descendants of the ancient Mauritanians, intermixed 
 with their Arab conquerors, and with the remains of the Van' dais who once ruled over the 
 country. 
 
 3. An' tioch, once eminent for its beauty and greatness, was situated in northern Syria, on 
 the left bank of the Oron' tes, (now the Aaszy,) twenty miles from its entrance into the Medi- 
 terrauean. An' tioch was the capital of the Macedonian kingdom of Syria ; and about the 
 year 65 B. C. the conquests of Pompey brought it, with the whole of Syria, under the control 
 of the Romans. It was long the centre of an extensive commerce, the residence of the gov- 
 ernor of Syria, the frequent resort of the Roman emperors, and, next to Rome, the most cele- 
 brated city of the empire for the amusements of the circus and the theatre. Paul and Barnabas 
 planted there the doctrines of Christianity ; and " the disciples were called Christians first in 
 An' tioch." Acts, xi. 26. (Map No. VII.) 
 
 4. Kurdistan', comprised chiefly within the basin of the Tigris, is claimed partly by Turkey 
 and partly by Persia. It is the country of the Kurds, in whose character the love of theft and 
 brigandage is a marked feature ; but, at the same time, when visited by travellers they exercise 
 the m >st generous hospital! ty, and often force 1 andsome presents on their departing gueete.
 
 CHAP. I] ROMAN HISTORY. 223 
 
 29. During ten years the persecution continued with scarcely miti- 
 gated horrors ; and such multitudes of Christians suffered death that 
 at last the imperial murderers boasted that they had extinguished 
 the Christian name and religion, and restored the worship of the 
 gods to its former purity and splendor. In spite, however, of the 
 efforts of tyranny, the Christian Church survived, and in a few years 
 reigned triumphant in the very metropolis of heathen idolatry. 
 
 30. After a reign of twenty years, Diocletian, in the presence of 
 a large concourse of citizens and soldiers who had assembled at 
 Nicomedia to witness the spectacle, voluntarily laid down the sceptre, 
 and retired to private life ; and on the same day Maxim' ian, accord- 
 ing to previous agreement, performed a similar ceremony , 
 at Milan. (May 1st, 305.) Galerius and Coustan' tius Knjs AND 
 were thereupon acknowledged sovereigns ; and two sub- CONSTAN'- 
 ordinates, or Caesars, were appointed to complete the 
 
 system of imperial government which Diocletian had established. 
 But this balance-of-power system needed the firm and dexterous 
 hand of its founder to sustain it ; and the abdication of Diocletian 
 was followed by eighteen years of discord and confusion. 
 
 31. One year after the abdication of the sovereigns, Constan'tius 
 died at York, in Britain, when his soldiers proclaimed his son Con'- 
 stantine emperor. In a short time the empire was divid- xxa. g^. 
 ed between six sovereigns; but Con'stantine lived to STANTINE. 
 see them destroyed in various ways ; and, eighteen years after his 
 accession, having overcome in battle Licin'ius, the last of his rivals, 
 he was thus left sole master of the Roman world, whose dominiona 
 extended from the wall of Scotland to Kurdistan', and from the Red 
 Sea to Mount Atlas in Africa. Galerius had already died of a 
 
 " loathsome disease, which was considered by many as a punishment from 
 Heaven for his persecution of the Christians. 
 
 32. Con' stantine has been styled the first Christian emperor. 
 During one of his campaigns (A. D. 312) he is said to have seen a 
 miraculous vision of a luminous cross in the Heavens, on which was 
 inscribed the following words in Greek, " By this conquer." Certain 
 it is that from this period Con' stantine showed the Christians marks 
 of positive favor, and caused the cross to be employed as the imperial 
 standard: in his last battle with Licin'ius it was the emblem of the 
 cross that was opposed to the symbols of paganism ; and as the latter 
 went down in a night of blood, the triumph of Christianity over the 
 Roman world was deemed complete.
 
 224 MODERN HISTORY. [PACT H 
 
 33. The most important events in the reign of Con' stantine, after 
 he had restored the outward unity of the empire, were his wars with 
 the Sarmatians and Goths, whom he severely chastised , his domestic 
 difficulties, in which he showed little of the character of a Christian ; 
 and the establishment, at Byzan'tiuin, of the new capital of the Ro- 
 man empire; afterwards called Constantinople, from its founder. 
 The motives which led Con' stantine to the choice of a new capital, 
 on a spot which seemed formed by nature to be the metropolis of a 
 great empire, were those of policy and interest, mingled with feel- 
 ings of revenge for insults which he had received at Rome, where 
 he was execrated for abandoning the religion of his forefathers. 
 34. The removal of the sent of government was followed by an 
 entire change in the forms of civil and military administration. The 
 military despotism of the former emperors now gave place to the) 
 despotism of a court, surrounded by all the forms and ceremonies, 
 the pride, pomp, and circumstances, of Eastern greatness : all mag- 
 istrates were accurately divided into new classes, and a uniform sys- 
 tem of taxation was established, although the amount of tribute was 
 imposed by the absolute authority of the monarch. Finally Con'- 
 stantine, as he approached the end of his life, went back .to the sys- 
 tem of Diocletian, and divided the empire among his three sons 
 Con' stantine, Constan' tins, and Con' stans, and his two nephews, 
 Dalmatius and Hannibalianus. After a reign of thirty-one years 
 Con' stantine the First died at Nicomedia, at the age of sixty-three 
 years. (A. D. 337.) 
 
 35. The division of sovereign power among so many rulers in- 
 volved the empire in frequent insurrections and civil wars, until, 
 xxin. cos- sixteen years from the death of Con' stantine, Constan'- 
 STAN'TIUS IL ^ ug) or Constan' this II., after having seen all his rivals 
 overcome, and several usurpers vanquished, was left in the sole pos- 
 session of the empire. During his reign of twenty-four years he 
 was engaged in frequent wars with the Franks, Saxons, 1 Aleman' ni, 
 and Sarmatians, while the Persians continued to harass the Eastern 
 
 1. The Saxons were a people of Germany, whose original seats appear to have been on the 
 neck of the Cimbric peninsula, (now Denmark,) between the Elbe and the Baltic, and embrac- 
 ing the present Sleswick and Holstein. (Map No. XVII.) The early Saxons were a nation of 
 fishermen and pirates ; and it appears that after they had extended their depredations to the 
 coast* of Britain and eastern and southern Gaul, numerous auxiliaries from the shores of the 
 Baltic joined them, and, gradually coalescing with them into a national body, accepted the name 
 and the laws of the Saxons. In the early part of the fifth century, the Saxons were converted 
 to Christianity by the Roman missionaries ; and half a century later they had obtained a per- 
 manent establishment Lc Britain.
 
 CHAP. L] ROM AX HISTORY. 225 
 
 provinces. While Constau' tins was sustaining a doubtful war in 
 the East, his cousin Julian, whom he had appointed to the command 
 of the Western provinces, with the title of Csesar, was proclaimed 
 emperor by his victorious legions in Gaul. Preparations for civil 
 war \vcre made on both sides ; but the Roman world was saved from 
 the calamities of the struggle by the sudden death of Constau' tius. 
 (A. D. 361.) 
 
 30. Julian, commonly called the Apostate, on account of hi.s relaps 
 ing from Christianity into paganism, possessed many ami- XXIV 
 able and shining qualities, and his application to business Jo' LIAS THK 
 was intense. He reformed numerous abuses of his prede- APOSTATE - 
 cessor, but, in the great object of his ambition, the restoration of 
 ancient paganism, although he had issued an edict of universal toler- 
 ation, he showed a marked hostility to the Christians, subjecting 
 them to many disabilities and humiliations, and allowing their ene- 
 mies to treat them with excessive rigor. 
 
 37. Trained in the most celebrated schools of Grecian philosophy at 
 Athens, Julian was an able writer and an artful sophist, and, employ- 
 ing the weapons of argument and ridicule against the Christians, he 
 strenuously labored to degrade Christianity, and bring contempt upon 
 its followers. In this effort he was partially successful ; but ere 
 long the sophisms of the " apostate emperor" were ably refuted by 
 St. Cyril and others, and the result of the controversy was highly 
 favorable to the increase and spread of the new religion. 
 
 38. Not relying upon the weapons of argument and ridicule alone, 
 Julian aimed what he thought would be a deadly blow to Christi- 
 anity, by ordering the temple of Jerusalem to be rebuilt, hoping 
 thus to falsify the language of prophecy and the truth of Revela- 
 tion. But although the Jews were invited from all the provinces of 
 the empire to assemble once more on the holy mountain of their 
 fathers, and every effort was made to secure the success of the under- 
 taking, both by the emperor and the Jews themselves, the work did 
 not prosper, and was finally abandoned in despair. 
 
 39. Most writers, both Christians and pagans, declare that the 
 work was frustrated in consequence of balls of fire that burst from 
 the earth and alarmed the workmen who were employed in digging 
 the foundations. Whether these phenomena, so gravely and abun- 
 dantly attested, were supernatural or otherwise, does not affect the 
 authenticity of the prophecy that pronounced desolation upon Jeru- 
 salem. The most powerful monarch of the earth, stimulated by 
 
 15
 
 226 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II 
 
 pride, passion, and interest, and aided by a zealous people, attempt- 
 ed to erect a building in one of his cities, but found all his efforts 
 vain, because " the finger of God was there." a 
 
 40. During the same year in which Julian attempted the re- 
 building of the temple, he set out with a large army for the con- 
 quest of Persia. The Persian monarch made overtures of peace 
 through his ambassadors ; but Julian dismissed them with the decla- 
 ration that he intended speedily to visit the court of Persia. He 
 marched with great rapidity into the heart of the country, overcom- 
 ing all obstacles, but being led astray in the desert by treacherous 
 guides, his army was reduced to great distress by want of provisions, 
 and he was forced to commence a retreat. At length Julian himself, 
 in a skirmish which proved favorable to the Romans, was mortally 
 wounded by a Persian javelin. He died the same night, spending 
 his last moments, like Socrates, in philosophical discourse with his 
 friends. (A. D. 363.) 
 
 41. In the death of Julian, the race of the great Con' stantine was 
 extinct ; and the empire was left without a master and without an 
 
 xxv . heir. In this situation of affairs, Jovian, who had held 
 jo' VIAN. gome important offices under Con' stantine, was pro- 
 claimed emperor by the army, which was still surrounded by the 
 Persian hosts. The first care of Jovian was to conclude a dishonor- 
 able peace, by which five provinces beyond the Tigris, the whole of 
 Mesopatamia, and several fortified cities in other districts, were sur- 
 rendered to the Persians. On his arrival at An' tioch, Jovian re- 
 voked the edicts of his predecessor against the Christians. Soon 
 after, while on his way to Constantinople, he was found dead in his 
 bed, having been accidentally suffocated, as was supposed, by the 
 fumes of burning charcoal. (Feb. A. D. 364.) 
 
 42. After an interval of ten days, Valentin' ian, the commander 
 
 of the body guard at the time of Jovian's death, was 
 
 XXYL. VAIJ" 
 
 KNTIN' IAN elected emperor. One month later he associated wit! 
 AND himself, as a colleague in the empire, his brother Valens, 
 
 VA LF\S 
 
 upon whom he conferred the government of the Eastern 
 
 & The probable explanation of the remarkable incidents attending the attempt of Julian to 
 rebuild the temple, is, that the numerous subterranean excavations, reservoirs, &c., beneath 
 and around the ruins of the temple, which had been neglected during a period of three hundred 
 years, had become filled with inflammable air, which, taking fire from the torches of the work- 
 men, repelled, by terrific explosions, those who attempted to 'explore the ruins. From a simi- 
 lar cause terrible accidents sometimes occur iu deeply-excavated mines. See Mil man's Notes 
 un Gibbon ; Gibbon, vol. ii. p. 447.
 
 CHAP. L] ROMAN HISTORY. 227 
 
 provinces, from the lower Danube to the co^Snes of Persia; while 
 he reserved for himself the extensive territory reaching fiom the 
 extremity of Greece to the wall of Scotland, and from the latter to 
 the foot of Mount Atlas. This was the final division of the Roman 
 world into the Eastern and Western Empire. The capital of the 
 former was established at Constantinople, and of the latter at Milan. 
 The city of Rome had long been falling into neglect and insignifi- 
 cance. 
 
 43. Soon after the period at which we have now arrived, the 
 inroads of the barbarian tribes upon the northern and 
 
 eastern frontiers of the empire became more vexatious BARBARIAN 
 and formidable than ever. The Picts and Scots 1 ravaged IN ' aoADS - 
 Britain ; the Saxons began their piracies in the Northern seas ; the 
 German tribes of the Aleman' ni harassed Gaul ; and the Goths 
 crossed the Danube into Thrace ; but during the twelve years of 
 Valentin' ian's reign, his firmness and vigilance repulsed the barba- 
 rians at every point, while his genius directed and sustained the 
 feeble counsels of his brother Valens. 
 
 44. About the time of the death of Valentin' ian, (A. D. 375) 
 Valens was informed that the power of the Goths, long the enemies 
 of Rome, had been subverted by the Huns, a fierce and warlike race 
 of savages, till then unknown, who coming from the East, and crossing 
 the Don and the sea of Azof, had driven before them the European 
 nations that dwelt north of the Danube. The Vis' igoths first solicited 
 from the Roman government protection against their ruthless in- 
 vaders ; and a vast multitude of these barbarians, whose numbers 
 amounted to near a million of persons, of both sexes, and all ages, 
 were permitted to settle on the waste lands of Thrace. 
 
 45. In the meantime the Os' trogoths, pressed forward by the un- 
 relenting Huns, appeared on the banks of the Danube, and solicited 
 the same indulgence that had been shown to their countrymen ; and 
 when their request was denied they crossed the stream with arms in 
 their hands, and established a hostile camp on the territories of the 
 empire. The two divisions of the Gothic nation now united their 
 forces under their atXe general Frit' igern, and raising the standard 
 
 1. The Picts were a Caledonian race, famed for their marauding expeditions into the country 
 south of them. The Scots were also a Caledonian race, who are believed to have come, origin- 
 ally, from Spain into Ireland, whence they passed over into Scotland. The genuine descend 
 ants of the ancient Scotch are believed to be the Gsels, or Highlanders, who speak the Erse 
 )r Glic language, which differs but little from the Irish.
 
 228 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 of war devastated Thrace, Mac' edon, and Thes' saly, and carried 
 their ravages to the very gates of Constantinople. In a decisive battle 
 fought near Adrianople 1 the Romans were defeated, and Valens him- 
 self was slain. (A. D. 378.) 
 
 46. Gratian, the son of Valentin' ian, and his successor in the 
 
 Western empire, was already on his march to the aid of 
 GRA'TIAN Valens, when he heard the tidings of the defeat and 
 AND death of his unfortunate colleague. Too weak to avenge 
 :is ' his fate, and conscious of his inability to sustain alone 
 the sinking weight of the empire, he chose as his associate Theodo- 
 sius, afterwards called the Great, assigned to him the government of 
 the East, and then returned to his own provinces. Theodosius, by 
 his prudence, rather than his valor, delivered his provinces from* the 
 v;ourge of barbarian warfare. The Goths, after the death of their 
 great leader Frit' igern, were distracted by a multiplicity of counsels ; 
 and while some of them, falling back into their forests, carried their 
 conquests to the unknown regions cf the North, others were allowed 
 to settle in Thrace, Phrygia, and Lydia, where, in the bosom of des- 
 potism, they cherished their native freedom, manners, and language, and 
 lent to the Roman arms assistance at once precarious and dangerous. 
 
 47. Five years after the accession of Theodosius, Gratian perished 
 xxix. VAL- in an attempt to quell a revolt of Max' imus, governor 
 
 ENTIN'IAX n. O f Britain, who had been joined by the legions of Gaul, 
 Valentin' ian II. , who succeeded Gratian, was driven from Italy by 
 the usurper, and forced to take refuge in the court of Theodosius ; 
 but the latter, marching into Italy, defeated and slew Max' imus, and 
 restored the royal exile to his throne. (A. D 388.) The murder 
 of Valentin' ian by the Gaul Abrogas' tes, and the revolt which he 
 excited, (A. D. 392,) again called for the interference of Theodosius 
 in the affairs of the West. His arms soon triumphed over all oppo- 
 sition ; and the whole empire again came, for the last time, into the 
 
 xxx. HONO'- nancls f one individual. (A. D. 394.) Theodosius died 
 mus AND four months after his victory, having previously bestowed 
 ARCA' DIUS. upon kj g y OUD g est SOQ) Houorius, the throne of Milan, and 
 upon the eldest, Arcadius, that of Constantinople. 
 
 1. Jldrian6ple, one of the most important cities of Thrace, stood on the left bank of the river 
 Hebrus, now the Maritia, in one of the richest and finest plains of the world, one hundred and 
 thirty-four miles north-west from Constantinople. It was founded by and named after the em- 
 peror Adrian, although in early times a small Thracian village existed there, called Uskadama. 
 It is now the second city in the Turkish empire, containing a populatior o f not less than one 
 hundred thousand soul*. (Map No. VII.)
 
 CHAP. I] ROMAX HISTORY. 229 
 
 48. The civil wars ;hat followed the accession of the new empe- 
 ror were soon interrupted by the more important events of new bar- 
 barian invasions. Scarcely had Theodosius expired, when the Gothic 
 nation, guided by the bold and artful genius of Al'aric, XXXL AL/A 
 who had learned his lessons of war in the school of BIG THE 
 Frit' igern, was again in arms. After nearly all Greece 
 
 had been ravaged by the invader, Stil'icho, the able general of 
 Honorius, came to its assistance ; but Al' aric evaded him by passing 
 into Epirus, and soon after, crossing the Julian Alps, 1 advanced 
 toward Milan. (A. D. 403.) 
 
 49. Honorius fled from his capital, but was overtaken by the 
 speed of the Gothic cavalry, and obliged to shut himself up in the 
 little fortified town of As' ta, a where he was soon surrounded and 
 besieged by the enemy. Stil' icho hastened to the relief of his sov- 
 ereign, and suddenly falling upon the Goths in their camp at Pollen'- 
 tia, 3 routed them with great slaughter, released many thousand prison- 
 ers, retook the magnificent spoils of Corinth, Athens, Argos, and 
 Sparta ; and made captive the wife of Al' aric. The Gothic chief, 
 undaunted by this sudden reverse, hastily collected his shattered 
 army, and breaking through the unguarded passes of the Apennines, 
 spread desolation nearly to the walls of Rome. The city was saved 
 by the diligence of Stil' icho ; but the withdrawal of the barbarians 
 from Italy was purchased by a large ransom. 
 
 50. The recent danger to which Honorius had been exposed at 
 Milan, induced the unwarlike emperor to seek a more secure retreat 
 in the fortress of Raven' na, 4 which, from this time to the middle of 
 
 1. Augustus divided the Alpine chain, which extends from the Gulf of Genoa to the Adriat'- 
 ic, iu a crescent form, into seven portions ; of which the Julian range, terminating in Dlyr'- 
 icum., is the most eastern. 
 
 2. Is' to, (now rfsti) was on the north side of the river Tanarus, (now Tanaro] in Ligiiria, 
 twenty-eight miles south-east from Turin. 
 
 3. "The vestiges of Pollen' tia are twenty-flve miles to the south-east of Turin." (Gibbon, ii. 
 221.) "The modern village of Pollenza stands near the site of the ancient city." Cramer's 
 Italy, i. 28. 
 
 4. Raven' no, was situated on the coast of the Adriat' ic, a short distance below the mouths 
 of the Po. A '.though originally founded on the sea-shore, in the midst of marshes, in the days 
 of Strabo th marshes had greatly increased, seaward, owing to the accumulation of mud 
 brought dowr by the Po and other rivers. In the latter limes of the republic it was the great 
 naval station of the Romans on the Adriat' ic. Augustus constructed a new harbor three miles 
 from the old town, but in no very long time this was filled up also, and, " as early as the fifth or 
 sixth century of the Christian era, the port of Augustus was converted into pleasant gardens; 
 and a lonely grove of pines covered the ground where the Roman fleet once rode at anchor." 
 (Ribbon, ii. 224.) But this very circumstance, though it lessened the naval importance, in- 
 c eajd the strength of the place, and the shallowness of the water was a barrier against large 
 
 the nieraj . The only means of acce*>s inland was by a long and narrow causeway
 
 230 MODERN HISTORY. [?AET IL 
 
 the eighth century, was considered as the seat of government and the 
 capital of Italy. The fears of Honorius were not without founda- 
 tion ; for scarcely had Al' aric departed, when another deluge of bar- 
 barians, consisting of Vandals, 1 Suevi, 2 Burgun' dians, 3 Goths, and 
 Alani, and numbering not less than two hundred thousand fighting 
 men, under the command of Radagaisus, poured down upon Italy. 
 
 51. The Roman troops were now called in from the provinces for 
 tho defence of Italy, whose safety was again intrusted to the counsels 
 and the sword of Stil' icho. The barbarians passed, without resist- 
 ance, the Alps, the Po, and the Apennines, and were allowed by the 
 wary Stil' icho to lay siege to Florence, 4 when, securing all the passes, 
 he in turn blockaded the besiegers, who, gradually wasted by famine, 
 were finally compelled to surrender at discretion. (A. D. 406.) The 
 triumph of the Roman arms was disgraced by the execution of 
 Radagaisus ; and one-third of the vast host that had accompanied 
 him into Italy were sold as slaves. 
 
 several miles in extent, over an otherwise impassable morass ; and this avenue might be easily 
 guarded or destroyed on the approach of a hostile army. Being otherwise fortified, it was a 
 place of great strength and safety ; and during the last years of the Western empire was the 
 capital of Italy, and successively the residence of Honorius, Valentin' ian, Odoacer, Theod' oric, 
 and the succeeding Gothic monarchs. It is now a place of about sixteen thousand inhabitants, 
 and is chiefly deserving of notice for its numerous architectural remains. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 1. Van' dais, see p. 219. 
 
 2. The Suevi were a people of eastern Germany who finally settled in and gave their name 
 to the modern Suabia. 
 
 3. The Burgun' dians dwellers in burgs or towns a name given to them by the more 
 nomade tribes of Germany, were a numerous and warlike people of the Gothic or Van' dal 
 race, who can be traced back to the banks of the Elbe. Driven southward by the Gep' idae, 
 they pressed upon the Aleman' ni, with whom they were in almost continual war. They were 
 granted by Honorius, the Roman emperor, the territory extending from the Lake of Geneva to 
 the junction of the Rhine with the Moselle, as a reward for having sent him the head of the 
 \isurper Jovinus. A part of Switzerland and a large portion of eastern France belonged to 
 their new kingdom, which, as early as the year 470, was known by the name of Burgundy. 
 Their seat of government was sometimes at Lyons, and sometimes at Geneva. Continually 
 endeavoring to extend their limits, they were at last completely subdued, in a war with the 
 Franks, by the son of Clovis, after Clovis himself had taken Lyons. Their name was for a 
 long time retained by the powerful dukedom, afterwards province of Burgundy, now divided 
 into several departments. 
 
 4. Florence, (anciently Florentia,) is a city of central Italy on the river Arno, (anciently Arnus,) 
 one hundred and eighty-seven miles north-west from Rome. It owes its first distinction to Sylla, 
 who planted in it a Roman colony. In the reign of Tiberius it was one of the principal cities of 
 Italy. In 541 it was almost wholly destroyed by Totila, king of the Goths, but was restored by 
 Charlemagne, after which it was, for a long time, the chief city of one of the most famous of the 
 Italian republics. It is now the capital of the grand-duchy of Tuscany, which comprises the 
 northern part of ancient Etriiria. With a population of one hundred thousand, it bears the 
 aspect of a city filled with nobles and their domestics a city of bridges, churches, and palaces. 
 It has produced more celebrated men than any other city of Italy, or perhaps of Europe ; 
 among whom may be specified Dan' te, Petrarch, Boccacio, Lorenzo de Medici, Galileo, 
 Michsel An' gelo, Macchiavelli, the Popes Leo X and XI., and Clement VII, VIII., and XII.
 
 CHAP. I.] ROMAN HISTORY. 231 
 
 52. Two years after the great victory of Stil' icho, that minister, 
 whose genius might have delayed the fall o$ the empire, was treach- 
 erously murdered by the orders of the jealous and unworthy Hono- 
 rius. The monarch had soon reason to repent of his guilty rashness. 
 Adopting the counsels of his new ministers, he ordered a massacre of 
 the families of the barbarians throughout Italy. Thirty thousand 
 Gothic soldiers in the Roman pay immediately revolted, and invited 
 Al' aric to avenge the slaughter of his countrymen. 
 
 53. Again Al' aric entered Italy, and without attempting the 
 hopeless siege of Raven' na marched direct to Rome, which, during 
 a period of more than six hundred years, had not been violated by 
 the presence of a foreign enemy. After the siege had been protracted 
 until the rigors of famine had been experienced in all their horror, 
 and thousands were dying daily in their houses or in the streets for want 
 of sustenance, the Romans sough tr to purchase the withdrawal of their 
 invaders. The terms of Al' aric were, at first, all the gold and silver in 
 the city, all the rich and precious movables, and all the slaves of bar- 
 barian origin. When the ministers of the senate asked, in a modest 
 and suppliant tone, " If such, King, are your demands, what do you 
 intend to leave us ?" " YOUR. LIVES," replied the haughty conqueror. 
 
 54. The stern demands of Al' aric were, however, somewhat re- 
 laxed, and Rome was allowed to purchase a temporary safety by pay- 
 ing an enormous ransom of gold and silver and merchandize. 
 Al' aric retired to winter quarters in Tuscany, 1 but as Honorius and 
 his ministers, enjoying the security of the marshes and fortifications 
 of Raven' na, refused to ratify the treaty that had been concluded 
 by the Romans, the Goth turned again upon Rome, and, cutting ofi 
 the supplies, compelled the city to surrender. (A. D. 409.) He 
 then conferred the sovereignty of the empire upon At' talus, prefect 
 of the city, but soon deposed him and attempted to renew his nego- 
 tiations with Honorius. The latter refused to treat, when the king 
 of the Goths, no longer dissembling his appetite for plunder and re- 
 venge, appeared a third time before the walls of Rome ; treason 
 openod the gates to him, and the city of Romulus was abandoned 
 to the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia. 
 
 1. Tuscany, after the fall of the Western empire, successively belonged to the Goths and 
 Lombards. Charlemagne added it to his dominions, but under his successors it became in- 
 dependent. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was divided among the famous repub- 
 lics of Florence, Pisa, and Sienna : in 1531 these were reunited into a duchy which, in 1737, 
 fell into the hands of the house of Austria. In 1801 Napoleon erected it into the kingdom of 
 Etriiria : in 1808 it was incorporated with the French empire ; and in 1814 it reverted to Austria.
 
 232 MODERN HISTORY. [PJET IL 
 
 55. The piety of the Goths spared the churches and religious 
 houses, for Al' aric himsfclf, and many of his countrymen, professed 
 the name of Christians ; but Home was pillaged of her wealth, and 
 a terrible slaughter was made of her citizens. Still Al' aric was un- 
 willing that Rome should be totally ruined ; and at the end of six 
 days he abandoned the city, and took the road to southern Italy. Aa 
 he was preparing to invade Sicily, with the ulterior design of subju- 
 gating Africa, his conquests were terminated by a premature death. 
 (A. D. 410.) His body was interred in the bed of a small rivulet, a 
 and the captives who prepared his grave were murdered, that the 
 Romans might never learn the place of his sepulture. 
 
 56. After the death of Al'aric, the Goths gradually withdrew 
 from Italy, and, a few years later, that branch of the nation called 
 Vis' igoths established its supremacy in Spain and the east of Gaul. 
 Toward the middle of the same century, the Britons, finally aban- 
 doned by the Romans, and unable to resist the barbarous inroads of 
 the Picts and Scots, applied for assistance to the Angles 1 and Saxons, 
 warlike tribes from the coasts of the Baltic. The latter, after driv- 
 ing back the Picts and Scots, turned their arms against the Britons, 
 and after a long struggle finally established themselves in the island. 
 
 57. During these events in the north and west, the Van' dais, a 
 Gothic tribe which had aided in the reduction of Spain, and whose name, 
 with a slight change, has been given to the fertile province of Andalusia," 
 passed the straits of Gibraltar under the guidance of their chief Gen'- 
 
 xxxn seric, and, in the course of ten years, completed, in the 
 
 VALENTIN'- capture of Carthage, the conquest of the Roman prov- 
 
 IAN in. mces O f northern Africa. (A. D. 439.) Honorius was 
 
 already dead, and had been succeeded by Valentin' ian III., a youth 
 
 xxxni on ly s * x J ears f a g e - ^ n * ne meantime At' tila, justly 
 
 CONQUESTS called the " scourge of God " for the chastisement of 
 
 ILA< the human race, had become the leader of the Hunnish* 
 
 hordes. He rapidly extended his dominion over all the tribes of 
 
 Germany and Scythia, made war upon Persia, defeated Theodosics, 
 
 1. Jingles. From them the English have derived their name. 
 
 2. Andalusia, so called from the Van' dais, comprised the four Moorish kingdoms of Seville, 
 Cor' dova, Jaen, and Granada. It is the most southern division of Spain. Trajan and the 
 Senecas were natives of this province. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 3. The Huns, when first known, in the century before the Christian era, dwelt on the western 
 borders of the Caspian sea. The power of the Huns fell with At' tila, and the nation was soon 
 after dispersed. The present Hungarians are descended from the Huns, intermingled with 
 Turkish, Slavonic, and German races. 
 
 a. The Busentinus, a small stream that washes the walls of Consentia, now Cosenia.
 
 CHAP. I] ROMAN HISTORY. 233 
 
 the emperor of the East, in three bloody battles, and after ravaging 
 Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece, pursued his desolating march west- 
 ward into G-aul, but was defeated by the Romans and their Gothic 
 allies in the bloody battle of Chalons. 1 (A. D. 451.) The next 
 year the Huns poured like a torrent upon Italy, and spread their 
 ravages over all Lombardy. This visitation was the origin of the 
 Venetian republic, 4 which was founded by the fugitives who fled at 
 the terror of the name of At' tila. 
 
 58. The death of the Hunnic chief soon after this inroad, the civil 
 wars among his followers, and the final extinction of the empire of 
 the Huns, might have afforded the Romans an opportunity of escap- 
 ing from the ruin which impended over them, if they had not been 
 lost to all feelings of national honor. But they had admitted numer- 
 ous bands of barbarians in their midst as confederates and allies; 
 and these, courted by one faction, and opposed by another, became, 
 ere long, the actual rulers of the country. The provinces were pil- 
 laged, the throne was shaken, and often overturned by seditions ; and 
 two years after the death of At' tila, Rome itself was xxxiv. THE 
 taken and pillaged by a horde of Van' dais from Africa, VAN'DALS. 
 conducted by the famous Gen' seric, who had been invited across the 
 Mediterranean to avenge the insults which a Roman princess* had 
 received from her own husband. (A. D. 455.) 
 
 1. Chalons (shah-long) is a city of France, on the river Marne, a branch of the Seine, ninety- 
 five miles east from Paris, and twenty-seven miles south-east from Rheiins. It is situated in 
 the middle of extensive meadows, which were formerly known as the Catalauniau fields, 
 (Gibbon, iii. 340.) In the battle of Chalons the nations from the Caspian sea to the Atlantic 
 fought together ; and the number of the barbarians slain has been variously estimated at from 
 one hundred and sixty-two thousand to three hundred thousand. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. The origin of Venice dates from the invasion of Italy by the Huns, A. D. 452. The city is 
 built on a cluster of numerous small islands in a shallow but extensive lagoon, in the north- 
 western part of the Adriat' ic, north of the Po and the Adige, about four miles from the main 
 land. It is divided into two principal portions by a wide canal, crossed by the principal bridge 
 in the city, the celebrated Rialto. Venice is traversed by narrow lanes instead of streets, sel- 
 dom more than five or six feet in width ! but the grand thoroughfares are the canals ; and 
 gondolas, or canal boats, are the universal substitute for carriages. 
 
 Venice gradually became a wealthy and powerful independent commercial city, maintaining 
 its freedom against Charlemagne and his successors, and yielding a merely nominal allegiance 
 to the Greek emperors of Constantinople. Towards the middle of the fifteenth century the re- 
 public was mistress of several populous provinces in Lorn' bardy, of Crete and Cyprus of 
 the greater part of southern Greece, and most of the isles of the ./Egean sea ; and it continued 
 to engross the principal trade in Eastern products, till the discovery of a route to India by the 
 Cape of Good-Hope turned this traffic inloa new* channel. From this period Venice rapidly 
 declined. Stripped of independence and wealth, she now enjoys only a precarious existence, 
 and is slowly sinking into the waves from which she arose. (Map No. VIII.) 
 
 a. Eudox' ia, the widow of Valentin' ian III., had teen compelled to marry Max' imug, th 
 murderer, and successor in the empire, of her late husband, and it was she who invited tha 
 Van' dal chief to avenge her wrongs.
 
 234 MODERN HISTOKY. [PART IL 
 
 59. After the withdrawal of the Van' dais, which occurred the 
 year of the death of Valentin' ian III., Av' itus, a Gaul, was installed 
 
 xxxv Emperor by the influence of the gentle and humane 
 AV'ITUS. Theod'oric, king of the Vis' igoths ; but he was soon de- 
 MAJO KIAN. p 0ge( j jjy j^j c ' i me r ; the Gothic commander of the barba- 
 rian allies of the Romans. (A. D. 456.) The wise and beneficent 
 Majorian was then advanced to the throne by Ric' imer ; but hia 
 virtues were not appreciated by his subjects ; and a sedition of the 
 troops compelled him to lay down the sceptre after a reign of four 
 years. (A. D. 461.) 
 
 60. Ric' imer then advanced one of his own creatures, Severus, to 
 
 the nominal sovereignty ; but he retained all the powers 
 of state in his own hands. Annually the Van' dais from 
 Africa, having now the control of the Mediterranean, sent out from 
 Carthage, their seat of empire, piratical vessels or fleets, which 
 Spread desolation and terror over the Italian coasts, and entered at 
 will nearly every port in the Roman dominions. At length applica- 
 tion for assistance was made to Leo, then sovereign of the Eastern 
 empire, and a large armament was sent from Constantinople to Car- 
 thage. But the aged Gen' seric eluded the immediate danger by a 
 truce with his enemies, and, in the obscurity of night, destroyed by 
 fire almost the entire fleet of the unsuspecting Romans. 
 
 61. Amid the frequent revolutionary changes that were occurring 
 in the sovereignty of the Western empire, a Roman freedom and dig- 
 nity were lost in the influence of the confederate barbarians, who 
 formed both the defence and the terror of Italy. As the power of the 
 Romans themselves declined, their barbarian allies augmented their 
 demands and increased their insolence, until they finally insisted, 
 with arms in their hands, that a third part of the lands of Italy 
 should be divided among them. Under their leader Odoacer, a chief 
 of the barbarian tribe of the Her' uli, 1 they overcame the little re- 
 
 1. Of all the barbarians who threw themselves on the ruins of the Roman empire, it is most 
 difficult to trace the origin of the Her' uli. Their names, the only remains of their language, 
 are Gothic ; and it is believed that they came originally from Scandinavia. They were a fierce 
 people, who disdained the use of armor: their bravery was like madness : in war they showed 
 no pity for age, nor respect for sex or condition. Among themselves there was the same 
 'orocity : the sick and the aged were put to death at their own request, during a solemn festi- 
 val ; and the widow hung herself upon the tree which shadowed her husband's tomb. The 
 Her' uli, though brave and formidable, were few in number, claiming to be mostly of royal 
 blood ; and they seem not so much a nation, as a confederacy of princes and nobles, bound by 
 an oarh to live and die together with their arms in their hands. (Gibbon, iii. 8 ; and Note, 495-6.) 
 
 a. The remaining sovereigns of the Western empire, down to the time of its subversion 
 were Anthiinius, Olyb' rius, Glycejus, Nepos, and Augus' tulus.
 
 CHAP. I] ROMAN HISTORY 235 
 
 sistance that was offered them ; and the conqueror, abolishing the im- 
 perial titles of Caesar and Augustus, proclaimed him- 
 
 XX XVII SUB~ 
 
 self king of Italy. (A., D. 476.) The Western em- VERSION OF 
 pire of the Romans was subverted : Roman glory had THE WEST- 
 
 J T> V-L i J 1 A i ERN EMPIRE. 
 
 passed away: Roman liberty existed only in the rernem- 
 orance of the past : the rude warriors of Germany and Scythia pos- 
 sessed the city of Homulus ; and a barbarian occupied the palace of 
 the Caesars.
 
 236 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES: 
 
 EXTENDING FKOM THE OVERTHROW OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE OF THE ROMANS 
 A. D. 476, TO THE DISCOVERT OF AMERICA, A. D. 1492 = 1016 YEARS. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 GENERAL HISTORY, FROM THE OVERTHROW OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE OF THE 
 ROMANS, TO THE BEGINNING OF THE TENTH CENTURY : 424 YEARS. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. INTRODUCTORY. The period embraced in the Middle Ages. 2. Unm- 
 structive character of its early history. At what period its useful history begins. 3. Extent 
 of the barbarian irruptions. The Eastern Roman empire. Remainder of the Roman world. 
 4. The possessions of the conquerors toward the close of the sixth century. The changes 
 wrought by them. Plan of the present chapter. 
 
 5. THE MONARCHY OK THE HER' ULI. Its overthrow. 6. MONARCHY OF THE Os' TROGOTHS. 
 Theod' oric. Treatment of his Roman and barbarian subjects. 7. General prosperity of his reign. 
 Extent of his empire. The Os' trogoth and Vis' igoth nations again divided. 8. The successors 
 of Theod' oric. The emperor of the East. 9. THE ERA OF JUSTIN' IAN. State of the kingdom. 
 Persian war. 10. Justin' ian's armies. Absence of military spirit among the people. 11. Af- 
 rican war. First expedition of Belisarius, and overthrow of the kingdom of the Van' dais. 
 Fate of Gel' imer. His Van' dal subjects. 12. Sicily subdued. Belisarius advances into Italy. 
 Besieged in Rome. 13. The Gothic king Vit' iges surrenders. Final reduction of Italy by 
 Nar' ses. 14. Second war with Persia, Barbarian invasion repelled by Belisarius. Mournful 
 fate of Belisarius. Death and character of Justin' ian. 15. His reign, why memorable. Its 
 brightest ornament. Remark of Gibbon. History of the " Pandects and Code." 16. Subse- 
 quent history of the Eastern empire. Invasion of Italy by the Lombards. 17. THE LOMBARD 
 MONARCHY. Its extent and character. 18. Period of general repose throughout Western 
 Europe. Events in the East. 19. The darkness that rests upon European history at this 
 period. Remark of Sismondi. The dawning light from Arabia. 
 
 20. THE SARACEN EMPIRE. History of the Arabians. 21. Ancient religion of the Arabs. Re- 
 ligious toleration in Arabia. [Judaism. The Magian idolatry.] 22. Mahomet begins to preach a 
 new religion. 23. The declared medium of divine communication with him. Declared origin of 
 the Koran. 24. The materials of the Koran. Chief points of Moslem faith. Punishment of the 
 wicked. The Moslem paradise. Effects of the predestinarian doctrine of Mahomet. Practical part 
 of the new religion. Miracles attributed to Mahomet. [Mecca.] 25. Beginning of Mahomet's 
 preaching. TheHegira. 26. Mahomet at Medina. [Medina.] Progress of the new religion through 
 out all Arabia. [Mussulman.] 27. The apostasy that followed Mahomet's death. Restoration of 
 religious unity. 28. Saracen conquests in Persia and Syria. [Saracens. Bozrah.] 29. Con- 
 quest of all Syria. [Ernes' sa. Baalbec. Yermouk. Aleppo.] 30. Conquest of Persia, anJ 
 expiration of the dynasty of the Sassan' idae. [Cadesiah. Review of Persian History.] 31. 
 Conquest of Egypt. Destruction of the Alexandrian library. 32. Death of Omar. Caliphate 
 of Othman. 33. Military events of the reign of Othman. [Rhodes. Tripoli.] Othman's suc- 
 cessors. Conquest of Carthage, and all northern Africa 34. Introduction of the Saracens into 
 Spain. 35. Defeat of Roderic, and final conquest of Spain. [Guadalete. Guadalquiver. Meri- 
 da.] 3f Ao- ) ir encroachments in Gaul. Inroad of Abdelrahman. [The Pyrenees.] 37. Over
 
 CHAP. II.] MIDDLE AGES. 237 
 
 throw of the Saracen hosts by Charles Mart el. Importance of this victory. [Tours. Poictiera.] 
 38. The Eastern Satacens at this periud. [Hindostan.] Termination of the civil power of 
 the central caliphate. 39. The power that next prominently occupies the field of history. 
 
 40. MOMARCHIT OF THE FRAXKS: its origin. [Tournay. Cambray. Terouane. Cokgne.] 
 Clovis. Extent of his monarchy. [Soissons. Paris.] 41. Religious character of Clovi*. His 
 barbarities 42. The descenlunts of Clovis. Royal murders. Regents. Charles Alariel. 
 Pepin, the first monarch of the Carlovingian dynasty. [Papal authority.] 43. The reign, and 
 the character, of Popin. His division of the kingdom. 44. First acts of the reign of Charle- 
 magne. [The Loire.] The Saxons. Motives that led Charlemagne to declare war against them. 
 [The Elbe.] 45. His first irruption into their territory. [Weser.] History of fv r itikind. Saxon 
 rebellion. Changes produced by these Saxon wars. 16. Causes of the war with the Lombards. 
 Overthrow ot the Lombard kingdom. [Geneva. Pavia.] 47. Charlemagne's expedition into 
 Spain. [Catalonia. Pumpeluna. Saragos' sa. Roncesvalles.] 43. Additional co:, , 
 Charlemagne crowned emperor at Rome. 19. Importance of this event. General character of 
 the reign of Charlemagne. [Aix-la-Chapelle.] His private life. His cruelties. Concluding 
 estimate. 50. Causes that led to the division of the empire of Charlemagne. 51. Invasion of 
 the Northmen. 52. Ravages of the Hungarians. The Saracens on the Mediterranean coasts, 
 Changes, and increasing confusion, in European society. The island of Britain. 
 
 53. ENGLISH HISTORY. Saxon conquests. Saxon Heptarchy. 54. Introduction and spread 
 of Christianity. So. Union of the Saxon kingdoms. Reign of Egbert, and ravages of the 
 Northmen. 56. The successors of Egbert. Accession of Alfred. State of the kingdom. 57. 
 Alfred withdraws from public life lives as a peasant visits the Danish camp. 58. Defeats 
 the Danes, and overthrows the Danish power. Defence of the kingdom. 59. Limited sov- 
 ereignty of Alfred. Danish invasion under Hastings. The Danes withdraw. Alfred's power 
 at the time of his death. GO. Institutions, character, and laws, of Alfred. 
 
 1. The "Middle Ages," to which it is impossible to fix accurate 
 limits, may be considered as embracing that dark and x TNTRO- 
 gloomy period of about a thousand years, extending from DUCTORY. 
 the fall of the Western empire of the Romans nearly to the close 
 of the fifteenth century, at which point we detect the dawn of mod- 
 ern civilization, and enter upon the clearly-marked outlines of modern 
 history. 1 
 
 2. The history of Europe during several centuries after the over- 
 throw of the Western Roman empire offers little real instruction to 
 repay the labor of wading through the intricate and bloody annals 
 of a barbarous age. The fall of the Roman empire had carried 
 away with it ancient civilization ; and during many generations, the 
 elements of society which had been disruptured by the surges of 
 barbarian power, continued to be widely agitated, like the waves of 
 the ocean, long after the fury of the storm has passed. It is only 
 when the victors and the vanquished, inhabitants of the same country, 
 had become fused into one people, and a new order of things, new 
 bonds of society, and new institutions began to be developed, that 
 the useful history of the Middle Ages begins. 
 
 3. We must bear in mind' that it was not Italy alone that was 
 
 a. " The ten centuries, from the fifth to the fifteenth, seem, in a general point of view, to con- 
 stitute the period of the Middle Ages."Hallam.
 
 238 M3DERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 affected by the tide of barbarian conquest ; but that the storm spread 
 likewise over Gaul, Spain, Britain, and Northern Africa ; while the 
 feeble empire which had Constantinople for its centre, alone escaped 
 the general ruin. Here the majesty of Rome was still faintly rep- 
 resented by the imaginary successors of Augustus, who continued 
 until the time of the crusades to exercise a partial sovereignty 
 over the E*st, from the Danube to the 'Nile and the Tigris. The 
 remainder of the Roman world exhibited one scene of general ruin ; 
 for wherever the barbarians marched in successive hordes, their 
 route was marked with blood : cities and villages were repeatedly 
 plundered, and often destroyed ; fertile and populous provinces were 
 converted into deserts ; and pestilence and famine, following in the 
 train of war, completed the desolation. 
 
 4. When at length, toward the close of the sixth century, the 
 frenzy of conquest was over, and a partial calm was restored, the 
 Saxons, from the shores of the Baltic, were found to be in possession 
 of the southern and more fertile provinces of Britain : the Franks 
 or Freemen, a confederation of Germanic tribes, were masters of 
 Gaul : the Huns, from the borders of the Caspian Sea, occupied 
 Pannonia ; the Goths and the Lombards, the former originally from 
 northern Asia, and the latter of Scandinavian origin, had established 
 themselves in Italy and the adjacent provinces ; and the Gothic 
 tribes, after driving the Van' dais from Spain, had succeeded to the 
 sovereignty of the peninsula. A total change had come over the 
 state of Europe : scarcely any vestiges of Roman civilization re- 
 mained ; but new nations, new manners, new languages, and new 
 names of countries were everywhere introduced ; and new forms of 
 government, new institutions, and new laws began to spring up out 
 of the chaos occasioned by the general wreck of the nations of the 
 Roman world. In the present chapter we shall pass rapidly over 
 the history of the Middle Ages ; aiming only to present the reader 
 such a general outline, or framework, of its annals, as will aid in the 
 search we shall subsequently make for the seeds of order, and the 
 first rudiments of policy, laws, and civilization, of Modern Europe. 
 
 5. After Odoacer, the chief of the tribe of the Her' uli, had con- 
 quered Italy, he divided one third of the ample estates of the nobles 
 
 ii. THE MON- amon g hi s followers ; but although he retained the gov- 
 
 ARCHY OF ernment in his own hands, he allowed the ancient forms 
 
 IER ULI. Q a( j mm i s t, ra ti on to remain ; the senate continued to sit, 
 
 as usual ; and after seven years the consulship was restored ; while
 
 CHAP. II.] MIDDLE AGES. 239 
 
 none of the municipal or provincial authorities were changed. 
 Odoacer made some attempts to restore agriculture in the provinces ; 
 but still Italy presented a sad prospect of misery and desolation. 
 After a duration of fourteen years, the feeble monarchy of the 
 Her' uli was overthrown by the Os' trogoth king, Theod' oric, who, 
 disregarding his plighted faith, caused his royal captive, Odoacer, to 
 be assassinated at the close of a conciliatory banquet. (A. D. 493.) 
 
 6. Theod' oric, the first of the Os' trogoth kings of Italy, had 
 been brought up as a hostage at the court of Constantinople. At 
 times the friend, the ally, and the enemy of the imbecile 
 monarchs of the Eastern empire, he restored peace to AR C H Y OF 
 Italy, and a degree of prosperity unusual under the THE OS'TBO- 
 sway of the barbarian conquerors. Like Odoacer, he in- 
 dulged his Roman subjects in the retention of their ancient laws, 
 language, and magistrates; and employed them chiefly in the ad- 
 ministration of government ; while to his rude Gothic followers he 
 confided the defence of the State ; and by giving them lands which 
 they were to hold on the tenure of military service, he endeavored 
 to unite in them the domestic habits of the cultivator, with the ex- 
 ercises and discipline of the soldier. 
 
 7. Theod' oric encouraged improvements in agriculture, revived 
 the spirit of commerce and manufactures, and greatly increased the 
 population of his kingdom, which, at the close of his reign, embraced 
 near I} 7 a million of the barbarians, many of whom, however, were 
 soldiers of fortune and adventurers who had flocked from all the sur- 
 rounding barbarous nations to share the riches and glory which 
 Theod' oric had won. Theod' oric reigned thirty-three years ; and 
 at the time of his death his kingdom occupied not only Sicily and 
 Italy, but also Lower Gaul, and the old Roman provinces between 
 the head of the Adriat' ic and the Danube. If he had had a son to 
 whom he might have transmitted his dominions, his Gothic succes- 
 sors would probably have had the honor of restoring the empire of 
 the West ; but on his death, (A. D. 526) the two nations of the Os'- 
 trogoths and the Vis' igoths were again divided ; and the reign of 
 the Great Theod' oric passed like a brilliant meteor, leaving no per- 
 manent impression of its glory. 
 
 8. Seven Os' trogoth kings succeeded Theod' oric on the throne 
 of Italy during a period of twenty-seven years. Nearly all met 
 with a violent death, and were constantly engaged in a war with 
 Justin' ian, emperor of the East, who finally succeeded in reducing
 
 240 MODERN HISTORY. [PART H. 
 
 Italy under his dominion. The reign of that monarch is the most 
 brilliant period in the history of the Eastern empire ; and as it fol- 
 lows immediately after the career of Theod' oric in the West, and 
 embraces all that is interesting in the history of the period which it 
 occupies, we pass here to a brief survey of its annals. 
 
 9. The year after the death of Theod' oric, Justin' ian succeeded 
 
 his uncle Justin on the throne of the Eastern empire. 
 
 IV. THE _ r 
 
 ERA OF His reign is often alluded to in history as the " Era of 
 JUSTIN' IAN. j us 'tinian." On his accession he found the kingdom 
 torn by domestic factions ; hordes of barbarians menaced the fron- 
 tiers, and often advanced from the Danube three hundred miles into 
 the country ; and during the first five years of his reign he waged an 
 expensive and unprofitable war with the Persians. The conclusion 
 of this war, by the purchase of a peace at a costly price, enabled 
 Justin' ian, who was extremely ambitious of military fame, to turn his 
 arms to the conquest of distant provinces. 
 
 1 0. Justin' ian never led his armies in person ; and his troops con- 
 sisted chiefly of barbarian mercenaries Scythians, Persians, Her' uli, 
 Van' dais, and Goths, and a small number of Thracians : the citizens 
 of the empire had long been forbidden, under preceding emperors, 
 to carry arms, a short-sighted policy which Justin' ian's timidity 
 and jealousy led him to adopt: and so little of military spirit re- 
 mained among the people, that they were not only incapable of fight- 
 ing in the open field, but formed a very inadequate defence for the 
 ramparts of their cities. Under these circumstances, with but a 
 small body of regular troops, and without an active militia from 
 which to recruit his armies, the military successes of Justin' ian are 
 among the difficult problems of the age. 
 
 1 1 . Africa, still ruled by the Van' dais, first attracted the military 
 ambition of Justin' ian, although his designs of conquest were con- 
 cealed under the pretence of restoring to the Van'dal throne its 
 bgitimate successor, of the race of the renowned Gen' seric. The 
 first expedition, under the command of Belisarius, the greatest gen- 
 eral of his age, numbering only ten thousand foot soldiers and five 
 thousand horsemen, landed, in September 533, about five days' jour- 
 ney to the south of Carthage. The Africans, who were still called 
 Romans, long oppressed by their Van' dal conquerors, hailed Belisa- 
 rius as a deliverer; and Gel' imer, the Van' dal king, who ruled over 
 eight or nine millions of subjects, and who could muster eighty thou-
 
 CHAP III MIDDLE AGES. 241 
 
 sand warriors 1 of his own nation, found himself suddenly alone with 
 his Van' dais in the midst of a hostile population. Twice Gel' iraer 
 was routed in battle ; and before the end of November Africa was 
 conquered, and the kingdom of the Van' dais destroyed. Gel' imer 
 himself, having capitulated, was removed to Galatia, where ample 
 possessions were given him. and where he was allowed to grow old in 
 peace, surrounded by his friends and kindred, and a few faithful fol- 
 lowers. The bravest of the Van' dais enlisted in the armies of Jus- 
 tin' ian ; and ere long the remainder of the Van' dal nation in Africa, 
 being involved in the convulsions that followed, entirely disappeared 
 
 12. Justin' ian next projected the conquest of the Gothic empire 
 of Italy, and its dependencies ; and in the year 535 Belisarius land- 
 ed in Sicily at the head of a small army of seven thousand five hun- 
 dred men. In the first campaign he subdued that island : in the 
 second year he advanced into southern Italy, where the old Roman 
 population welcomed him with joy, and the Goths found themselves 
 as unfavorably situated as the Van' dais had been in Africa ; but, 
 deposing their weak prince, they raised Vit'iges to the throne, who 
 was a great general and a worthy rival of Belisarius. The latter 
 gained possession of Rome, (Dec. 536,) where for more than a year 
 he was besieged by the Goths ; and although he made good his de- 
 fence, almost the entire population of the city in the meantime per 
 ished by famine. 
 
 13. Vit'iges himself was next besieged in Raven' na, and was 
 finally forced to surrender the place, and yield himself prisoner. 
 (Dec. 53>.) He was deeply indebted to the generosity of Justin' ian, 
 who allowed him to pass his days in affluence in Constantinople 
 The jealousy of Justin' ian, however, having recalled Belisarius from 
 Italy, in a few years the Goths recovered their sway ; but it was over 
 a country almost deserted of its inhabitants. At length, in the year 
 552, Justin' ian formed in Italy an army of thirty thousand men, 
 which he placed under the command of the eunuch Nar' ses, who 
 unexpectedly proved to be an able general. In the following year 
 the last of the Os'trogoth kings was slain in battle, and the empire 
 of Justin' ian was extended over the deserted wastes of the once fer- 
 tile and populous Italy. (A. D. 554.) 
 
 14. In the East, Justin' ian was involved in a second war with 
 Chosroes, or Nashirvan, the most celebrated Persian monarch of the 
 
 1. Gibbon, iii. 03, says one hundred and sixty thousand ; and Sismondi, Fall of the Roman 
 Empire, i. 221, has the same number. Ste the cotrectloa in Milman's Notes to G'bbon. 
 L 16
 
 MODERN HISTORY. [PAUT IL 
 
 Sassanid dynasty. Hostilities were carried on during sixteen years 
 (A. D. 540 550) with unrelenting obstinacy on both sides ; but after 
 a prodigious waste of human life, the frontiers of the two empires 
 remained nearly the same as they were before the war. When Jus- 
 tin' ian was nearly eighty years of age he was again obliged to have 
 recourse to the services of his old general Belisarius, not less aged 
 than himself, to repel an invasion of the barbarians who had ad- 
 vanced to the very gates of Constantinople. At the head of a small 
 band of veterans, who in happier years had shared his toils, he drove 
 back the enemy ; but the applauses of the people again excited the 
 jealousy and fears of the ungrateful monarch, who, charging his 
 faithful servant with aspiring to the empire, caused his eyes to be 
 torn out, and his whole fortune to be confiscated ; and it is said that 
 the general who had conquered two kingdoms, was to be seen blind, 
 and led by a child, goirfg about with a wooden cup in his hand to so- 
 licit charity. Justin' ian died at the age of eighty-three, after a 
 reign of more than thirty-eight years. (Nov. 565.) The character 
 of Justin' ian was a compound of good and bad qualities ; for al- 
 though personally inclined to justice, he often overlooked, through 
 weakness, the injustice of others, and was in a great measure ruled 
 during the first half of his reign by his wife Theodora, an unprin- 
 cipled woman, under whose orders many acts of oppression and 
 cruelty were committed. 
 
 15. The reign of Justin' ian forms a memorable epoch in the his- 
 tory of the world. He was the last Byzantine emperor who, by his 
 dominion over the whole of Italy, reunited in some measure the 
 two principal portions of the empire of the Caesars. But his exten- 
 sive conquests were not his chief glory : the brightest ornament of 
 iiis reign, which has immortalized his memory, is his famous compi- 
 lation of the Roman laws, known as the " Pandects and Code of 
 Justin' ian." " The vain titles of the victories of Justin' ian," says 
 Gibbon, " are crumbled into dust : but the name of the legislator 
 is inscribed on a fair and everlasting monument." To a commission 
 of ten emiment lawyers, at the head of which was Tribonian, J us- 
 tin' ian assigned the task of reducing into a uniform and consistent 
 code, the vast mass of the laws of the Roman empire ; and after this 
 had been completed, to another commission of seventeen, at the 
 head of which also was Tribonian, was assigned the more difficult 
 work of searching out the scattered monuments of ancient jurispru 
 .dence, of collecting and putting in order whatever was useful in
 
 CHAP. IL] MIDDLE AGES. 243 
 
 the books of former jurisconsults, and of extracting the true spirit 
 of the laws from questions, disputes, conjectures, and judicial de- 
 cisions of the Roman civilians. This celebrated work, containing 
 the immense store of the wisdom of antiquity, after being lost during 
 several centuries of the Dark Ages, was accidentally brought to ligh* 
 in the middle of the twelfth century, when it contributed greatly te 
 the revival of civilization ; and the digest which Gibbon has mad* 
 of it is now received as the text book on civil Law in some of the 
 universities of Europe. 8 - 
 
 16. The history of the Eastern or Greek empire, during several 
 centuries after Justin' ian, is so extremely complicated, and its an- 
 nals so obscure and devoid of interest, that we pass them by, for sub- 
 jects of greater importance. Three years after the death of Justin'- 
 ian, Italy underwent another revolution. In the year 563, the whole 
 Lombard nation, comprising the fiercest and bravest of the Germanic 
 tribes, led by their king Alboin, and aided by twenty thousand Sax- 
 ons, descended from the eastern Alps, and at once took possession 
 of northern Italy, which, from them, is called Lombardy. The 
 Lombard monarchy, thus established, lasted, under twenty-one kings, 
 during a period of little more than two centuries. 
 
 1 7. As the Lombards advanced into the country, the inhabitants 
 ehut themselves up in the walled cities, many of which, 
 
 after enduring sieges, and experiencing the most dread- LOMBARD 
 ful calamities, were compelled to surrender ; but the MONARCHr - 
 Lombard dominion never embraced the whole peninsula. The 
 islands in the upper end of the Adriat' ic, embracing the Venetian 
 League, the country immediately surrounding Raven' na, together 
 with Rome, Naples, and a few other cities, remained under the juris- 
 diction of the Eastern or Greek emperors, or were at times inde- 
 pendent of foreign rule. The Lombards were ruder and fiercer than 
 the Goths who preceded them ; and they at first proved to the Ital- 
 ians far harder task-masters than any of the previous invaders ; but 
 the change from a wandering life exerted an influence favorable 
 to their civilization ; and their laws, considered as those of a barba- 
 rous people, exhibited a considerable degree of wisdom and equality. 
 
 18. The period at which we have now arrived, towards the close 
 of the sixth century, exhibits the first interval of partial repose that 
 had fallen upon Western Europe since the downfall of the Roman 
 empire. Some degree of quiet was' now settling upon Italy under 
 
 a. Notes to Gibbon, iii. 151.
 
 244 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II. 
 
 the rule of the Lombard kings : the Goths were consolidating their 
 power in Spain : a stable monarchy was gradually rising in France, 
 from the union of the Gallic tribes ; and the Saxons had firmly es- 
 tablished themselves in the south of Britain. The only events in 
 the East that attract our notice consist of a series of wars between 
 the Greek emperors and the Persians, during which period, if we are 
 to rely upon doubtful narratives which wear the air of fables, at one 
 time all the Asiatic provinces of the Eastern empire were conquered 
 by the Persians; and subsequently, the whole of Persia, to the 
 frontiers of India, was conquered by the monarchs of the Eastern 
 empire. Eventually the two empires appear to have become equally 
 exhausted ; and when peace was restored (A. D. 628) the ancient 
 boundaries were recognized by both parties. 
 
 19- But while a degree of comparative repose was settling upon 
 Europe, a night of darkness, owing to the absence of all reliable 
 documents, rests upon its history, down to the time of Charlemagne. 
 "A century and a half passed away," says Sismondi, " during which 
 we possess nothing concerning the whole empire of the West, except 
 dates and conjectures." a This obscurity lasts until a new and unex- 
 pected light breaks in from Arabia ; when a nation of shepherds and 
 robbers appears as the depository of letters which had been allowed 
 to escape from the guardianship of every civilized people. 
 
 20. Turning from the darkness which shrouds European history 
 in the seventh century, we next proceed to trace the remarkable rise 
 and establishment of the power of the Saracens. In the parched. 
 
 THE san dy, an d, m great part, desert Arabia, a country 
 SARACEN, nearly four times the extent of France, the hardy Arab, 
 [RE> of an original and unmixed race, had dwelt from time 
 immemorial, in a constant struggle with nature, and enjoying all the 
 wild freedom of the rudest patriarchal state. The descendants of 
 Ishmael the " wild man of the desert" have always been free, and 
 such they will ever remain ; an effect, at once, of their local position, 
 and, as many believe, the fulfilment of prophecy ; and although a 
 few of the frontier cities of Arabia have been at times temporarily 
 subjected by the surrounding nations, Arabia, as a country, is the only 
 land in all antiquity that never bowed to the yoke of a foreign conqueror. 
 
 21. The ancient religion of the Arabs was Sabaism, or star -worship, 
 which assumed a great variety of forms, and was corrupted by adora- 
 tion of a vast number of images, which were supposed to have somo 
 
 a. Sismondi, Fall of the Roman Empire, i. 258.
 
 I 
 
 CHAP. II] MIDDLE AGES. 243 
 
 mysterious affinity to the heavenly bodies. The Arabs had seven 
 temples dedicated to the seven planets : some tribes exclusively re- 
 vered the moon, others the dog star : Judaism 3 - was embraced by a 
 few tribes, Christianity by some, and the Magian idolatry 1 of Persia 
 by others. So completely free was Arabia, each sect or tribe being 
 independent, that absolute toleration necessarily existed ; and numer- 
 ous refugee sects that fled from the persecution of the Roman empe- 
 rors, found in the wild wastes of that country a quiet asylum. 
 
 22. About the beginning of the seventh century, Mahom' et or 
 Moham' med, an Arabian impostor, descended from the Sabsean 
 priests of Mecca, where was the chief temple of the Sabaean idola- 
 try, began to preach a new religion to his countrymen. He repre- 
 sented to them the incoherence and grossness of their religious rites, 
 and called upon them to abandon their frail idols, and to acknowl- 
 edge and adore the One true God, the invisible, all good, and all- 
 powerful ruler of the universe. Acknowledging the authenticity 
 both of the Jewish scriptures and the Christian revelation, he pro- 
 fessed to restore the true and primitive faith, as it had been in the 
 days of the patriarchs and the prophets, from Adam to the Messiah. 
 
 23. Like Numa of old, Mahom' et sought to give to the doctrines 
 which he taught the sanction of inspired origin and miraculous ap- 
 proval ; and as the nymph Egeria was the ministering goddess of the 
 former, so the angel Gabriel was the declared medium of divine 
 communication with the latter. During a period of twenty-three 
 
 1. The M&gian idolatry consisted of the religious belief and worship presided over by the 
 Magian priesthood, who comprised, originally, one of the six tribes into which the nation of 
 the Medes was divided. The Mtigi, or " wise men," had not only religion, but the higher 
 branches of all learning also, in their charge ; and they practised different sorts of divination, 
 astrology, and enchantment, for the purpose of disclosing the future, influencing the present, 
 and calling the past to their aid. So famous were they that their name has been applied to all 
 orders of magicians and enchanters. Zoroas' ter, who is supposed to have lived about the 
 seventh century before Christ, reformed the Magian religion, and remodelled the priesthood ; 
 and by some he is considered the founder of the order. 
 
 The Magian priests taught that the gods are the spiritual essences of fire, earth, and water, 
 Vhat there are two antagonistic powers in nature, the one accomplishing good designs, the other 
 evil ; that each of these shall subdue and be subdued by turns, for six thousand years, but 
 that, at last, through the intervention of the still higher and Supreme Being, the evil principle 
 shall perish, and men shall live in happiness, neither needing food, nor yielding a shadow. 
 
 The great influence of the Magi is well illustrated in the book of Daniel, where Nebuchad- 
 nezzar invoked the aid of the different classes of their order magicians, astrologers, sorcerers, 
 Chaldeans, and soothsayers. In the time of the Saviour, the Magian system was not extinct, 
 as we have evidence of in the allusion made to Simon Magus, who boasted himself to be 
 " some great one." (Acts, viii. 9 xiii. 6, &c.) 
 
 a. By the term Jadaism is meant the religious rites and doctrines of the taws, as enjoined 
 in the law of M -ses.
 
 246 MODERN HISTORY. [PART 1L 
 
 years occasional revelations, as circumstances required, are said to 
 have been made to the Prophet, who was consequently never at a 
 loss for authority to justify his conduct to his followers, or for author- 
 itative counsel in any emergency. These revelations, carefully treas- 
 ured up in the memories of the faithful, or committed to writing by 
 amanuenses, (for the Moslems boast that the founder of their religion 
 could neither read nor write,) were collected together two years after 
 the death of the Prophet, and published as the Koran, or Moham'- 
 medan Bible. 
 
 24. The materials of the Koran are borrowed chiefly from the 
 Jewish and Christian Scriptures, and from the legends, traditions, 
 and fables of Arabian and Persian mythology. The two great 
 points of Moslem faith are embraced in the declaration " There is 
 but one God, and Mahom' et is his prophet." The other prominent 
 points of the Moslem creed are the belief in absolute predestina 
 tion, the existence and purity of angels, the resurrection of the 
 body, a general judgment, and the final salvation of all the dis- 
 ciples of the Prophet, whatever be their sins. "Wicked Moslems are 
 to expiate their crimes during different periods of suffering, not to 
 exceed seven thousand yoars ; but infidel contemners of the Koran 
 are to be doomed to an eternity of woe. A minute and appalling 
 description is given of the place and mode of torment, a vast re- 
 ceptacle, full of smoke and darkness, dragged forward with roaring 
 noise and fury by seventy thousand angels, through the opposite ex- 
 tremes of heat and cold, while the unhappy objects of wrath are tor- 
 mented by the hissing of numerous reptiles, and the scourges of 
 hideous demons, whose pastime is cruelty and pain. The Moslem 
 paradise is all that an Arab imagination cun paint of sensual felici- 
 ty ; groves, rivulets, flowers, perfumes, and fruits of every variety 
 to charm the senses ; while, to every other conceivable delight, sev- 
 enty-two damsels of immortal youth and dazzling beauty are assigned 
 to minister to the enjoyment of the humblest of the faithful. The 
 promise to every faithful follower of the Prophet, of an unlimited 
 indulgence of the corporeal propensities, constitutes a fundamental 
 principle of the Moham' inedan religion. The predestinarian doctrine 
 of Mahom' et led his followers towards fatalism, and exercised a 
 marked influence upon their lives, and especially upon their warlike 
 character ; for as it taught them that the hour of death is determined 
 beforehand, it inspired them with an indifference to danger, and gave 
 a permanent security to their bravery. Mahom' et promised to those
 
 CHAP. II.] MIDDLE AGES. 247 
 
 of his followeis who fell in battle an immediate admission to the joys 
 of paradise. The practical part of the new religion consisted of 
 prayer five times a day, and frequent ablutions of the whole body, 
 alms, fastings and the pilgrimage to Mecca. 1 Tradition asserts that 
 Mahom' et confirmed by miracles the truth of his religion ; and a 
 mysterious hint in the Koran has been converted, by the traditionists, 
 into a circumstantial legend of a nocturnal journey through the seven 
 heavens, in which Mahom' et conversed familiarly with Adam, Moses, 
 and the prophets, and even with Deity himself. 
 
 25. It was in the year 609, when Mahom' et was already forty 
 years old, that he began to preach his new doctrine at Mecca. His 
 first proselytes were made in his own family ; but by the people his 
 pretensions were long treated with ridicule ; and at the end of thir- 
 teen years he was obliged to flee from Mecca to save his life. (A. D. 
 622.) This celebrated flight, called the Hegira, is the grand era of 
 the Moham' medan religion. 
 
 26. Repairing to Yatreb, the name of which he changed to Medi- 
 na, 2 (or Medinet el Nebbi, the city of the Prophet,) he was there re- 
 ceived by a large band of converts with every demonstration of joy ; 
 and soon the whole city acknowledged him as its leader and prophet. 
 Mahomet now declared that the empire of his religion was to be es- 
 tablished by the sword : every day added to the number of his prose- 
 lytes, who, formed into warlike and predatory bands, scoured the 
 desert in quest of plunder ; and after experiencing many successes 
 and several defeats, Mahom' et, in the seventh year of the Hegira, 
 with scarcely a shadow of opposition, made himself master of Mecca, 
 whose inhabitants swore allegiance to him as their temporal and 
 spiritual prince. The conquest or voluntary submission of the rest 
 of Arabia soon followed, and at the period of Mahom' et's last pil- 
 grimage to Mecca, in the tenth year of the Hegira, and the year of 
 his death, a hundred and fourteen thousand Mussulmen 3 marched 
 under his banner. (A. D. 632.) 
 
 1. Mecca, the birth-place of Mahom' et, and the great centre of attraction to all pilgrims of 
 the Moham' medan faith, is in western Arabia, about forty miles east from the Red Sea, 
 Formerly the concourse of pilgrims to the " holy city" was immense ; but the taste for pil- 
 grimages is now rapidly declining throughout the Moham' medan world. 
 
 2. Medina is situated in western Arabia, one hundred miles north-east from its port of Yembo 
 on the Red Sea, and two hundreitand sixty miles north from Mecca. It is surrounded by a wall 
 about forty feet high, flanked by thirty towers. It is now chiefly important as being in posses- 
 sion of the tomb containing the remains of the prophet. 
 
 3. The word Mussulman, which is used to designate a follower of Mahom' et, signifies, In 
 the Turkish language, " a true believer."
 
 248 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II 
 
 27. Mahom' et died without ha\ ing formed any organized govern- 
 ment for the empire which he had so speedily established ; and al- 
 though religious enthusiasm supplied, to his immediate followers, the 
 place of legislation, the Arabs of the desert soon began to relapse 
 into their ancient idolatries. The union of the military chiefs of the 
 Prophet alone saved the tottering fabric of Moslem faith from dis- 
 solution. Abubekr, the first believer in Mahom' et's mission, was 
 declared lieutenant or caliph ; and the victories of his general 
 Khaled, surnamed " the sword of Grod," over the apostate tribes, in a 
 few months restored religious unity to Arabia. 
 
 28. But the spirit of the Saracens 1 needed employment ; and pre- 
 parations were made to invade the Byzantine and Persian empires, 
 botk of which, from the long and desolating wars that had raged 
 between them, had sunk into the most deplorable weakness. Khaled 
 advanced into Persia and conquered several cities near the ruins of 
 Babylon, when he was recalled, and sent to join Abu Obeidah, who 
 had marched upon Syria. Palmyra submitted : the governor of Boz- 
 rah 2 turned both traitor and Mussulman, and opened the gates of the 
 city to the invaders ; Damascus was attacked, besieged, and finally 
 one part of the city was carried by storm at the moment that an- 
 other portion had capitulated. (Aug. 3d, 634.) Abubekr died the 
 very day the city was taken, and Omar succeeded to the Caliphate. 
 
 29. The fall of Ernes' sa, s and Baalbec" or Heliop'olis, soon fol- 
 
 1. The word Saracen, from sara, " a desert," means an Arabian. 
 
 2. Bozrak, was fifty miles south from Damascus, and eighty miles north-east from Jerusalem. 
 Though now almost deserted, the whole town and its environs are covered with pillurs and 
 other ruins of the finest workmanship. It is frequently mentioned in Scripture. In Jeremiah, 
 xlix. 13, we read, " For I have sworn by myself, saith the Lord, that Bozrah shall become a 
 desolation, a reproach, a waste, and a curse." {Map No. VI.) 
 
 3. Ernes' sn, now /ferns, a city of Syria, was on the eastern bank of the Oron' tos, now the 
 Aaszy, eighty-five miles north-east from Damascus. It was the birth-place of the Roman em- 
 peror Elagabalus. (Map No. VI.) 
 
 4. Baalbec, or Heliop' oils, the former a Syrian and the latter a Greek word both me*, ling 
 !!-.e "city of the sun," was a large and splendid city of Syria, forty miles north-west from Da- 
 mascus, and about thirty-five miles from the Mediterranean. The remains of ancient architec- 
 tural grandeur in Baalbec are more extensive than in any other city of Syria, Palmyra excepted. 
 It is believed that Baal-Ath, built by Solomon in Lebanon, (2. Chron. viii. 6,) was identical with 
 Eaal-Bec. While under the Roman power it was famed for its wealth and splendor ; and the 
 terms of its surrender to the Saracens sufficiently attest its great resources at that period : 
 two thousand ounces of gold, four thousand ounces of silver, two thousand silken vests, and 
 one thousand swords, besides those of the garrison, being the price demanded and paid to pre- 
 serve it from plunder. Although repeatedly sacked and dismantled, yet the changes that Jjave 
 taken place in the channels of commerce are the principal causes of its decay ; and, judging 
 from its decline during the last century, from five thousand inhabitants to less than two hun- 
 dred, probably the day is not far distant when, like many other Eastern lilies, it will cease to 
 be inhabited. (.Map No. VI.)
 
 CHAP. ILJ MIDDLE AGES. 249 
 
 lowed that of Damascus. Herac' lius, the Byzantine emperor, made 
 one great effort to save Syria, but on the banks of the Yermouk 1 his 
 best generals were defeated by Khaled with a loss of seventy thousand 
 soldiers, who were left dead on the field. (Nov. 636.) Jerusalem, 
 after a siege of four months, capitulated to Omar, who caused the 
 ground on which had stood the temple of Solomon to be cleared of 
 its rubbish, and prepared for the foundation of a mosque, which still 
 bears the name of the Caliph. The reduction of Aleppo 2 and An- 
 tioch, six years after the first Saracen invasion, completed the con- 
 quest of Syria. (A. D. 638.) 
 
 30. In the meantime the conquest of Persia had been followed 
 up by other Saracen generals. In the same year that witnessed the 
 battle of Yermouk, the Persians and Saracens fought on the plains 
 of Cadesiah 3 one of the bloodiest battles on record. Seven thousand 
 five hundred Saracens and one hundred thousand Persians are said 
 to have fallen. The fate of Persia was determined, although the 
 Persian monarch kept together some time longer the wrecks of his 
 empire, but he was finally slain in the year 65 1 , and with him ex- 
 pired the second Persian dynasty, that of the Sassan' idae. 4 
 
 31. Soon after the battle of Cadesiah, Omar intrusted to his lieu 
 
 1. The Yermouk, the Hieromax of the Greeks, is a river that empties into the Jordan from 
 the east, seventy-flve miles south-west from Damascus. (Map No. VL) 
 
 2. Aleppo, in northern Syria, is one hundred and ninety-six miles north-east from Damascus, 
 and fifty-five miles east from Antioch. It is surrounded by massive walls thirty-feet high and 
 twenty broad. It was once a place of considerable trade, communicating with Persia and 
 India by way of Bagdad, and with Arabia and Egypt by way of Damascus ; but the discovery 
 of a passage to India by way of the Cape of Good Hope struck a deadly blow at its greatness, 
 and it is now little more than a shadow of its former self. 
 
 3. Cadesiah was on the borders of the Syrian desert, south-west from Babylon. 
 
 4. The overthrow of the last of the great Persian dynasties is an appropriate point for a brief 
 review of Persian history. 
 
 It has been stated that, after the overthrow of the Persian monarchy by Alexander the Great, 
 Asia continued to be a theatre of wars waged by his ambitious successors, until Seleucus, 
 about the year 307 before our era, established himself securely in possession of the countries 
 between the Euphrates, (he Indus, and the Oxus, and thus founded the empire of the Scleucidte. 
 This empire continued undisturbed until the year 250 B. C., when the Partisans, under Arsiiccs, 
 revolted, and established the Parthian empire of the Arsac' idee. The Parthian empire at 
 tained its highest grandeur in the reign of its sixth monarch, Mithridates I., who carried his 
 arms even farther than Alexander himself. The descendants of Arsaces ruled until A. D. 226, 
 a period of 480 years, when the last prince of that family was defeated and taken prisoner by 
 Ar' deshir Bab' igan, a revolted Persian noble of the family of Sassan, who thus became the 
 founder of the dynasty of the Sassan' ides. The period of nearly five centuries between the 
 death of Alexander the Great and the reign of Ar' deshir, is nearly a blank in Eastern history ; 
 and what little is known of it is obtained from the pages of Roman writers. No connected 
 authentic account of this period can be given. The dynasty of the Sassan' idae continued until 
 ihe overthrow of the Persian hosts on the plains of Cadesiah, when the religion of Zoroaster 
 gave place to the triumph of the Mussulman faith. 
 
 L*
 
 250 MODERN HISTORY. \PAS.I II 
 
 tenant the conquest of Egypt, then forming a part of the Byzantine 
 or Greek empire. Peleu' shim, 1 after a mouth's siege, opened to the 
 Saracens the entrance to the country (638) ; the Coptic inhabitants 
 of Upper Egypt joined the invaders against the Greeks ; Memphis, 
 after a siege of seven months, capitulated ; Alexandria made a 
 longer and desperate resistance, but at length, at the close of the 
 year 640, the city was surrendered, a success which had cost the be- 
 siea^rs twenty-three thousand lives. When Amru asked Omar what 
 disposition he should make of the famous Alexandrian library, the 
 oaliph replied, " If these writings agree with the Koran, they are use- 
 less, and need not be preserved ; if they disagree, they are pernicious, 
 and should be destroyed." The sentence was executed witli blind 
 obedience, and this vast store of ancient learning fell a sacrifice to 
 the blind fanaticism of an ignorant barbarian. a 
 
 32. Four years after the conquest of Egypt, the dagger of an as- 
 sassin put an end to the life and reign of Omar. (Nov. 6th, 644.) 
 Othman, the early secretary of Mahom' et, succeeded to the caliphate; 
 but his extreme age rendered him poorly capable of supporting the 
 burden laid upon him. Various sects of Moslem believers began to 
 arise among the people : contentions broke out in the armies ; and 
 Othman, after a reign of eleven years, was poniarded on his throne, 
 while he covered his heart with the Koran. (June 18th, 655.) 
 
 33. The conquest of Cyprus and Khodes," and the subjugation of 
 the African coast as far westward as Tripoli, 3 were the principal 
 
 1. Peleusium, an important city of Egypt, was at the entrance of the Peleusiac, or most east- 
 ern branch of the Nile. It was surrounded by marshes ; and the name of the city was derived 
 from a Greek word signifying mud. Near its ruins stands a dilapidated castle named Tine/i, 
 the Arabic term for mire. 
 
 2. Rhodes, a celebrated island in the Mediterranean, is off the south-west coast of Asia 
 Minor, ten miles south from Cape Volpe, the nearest point of the main land. Its greatest 
 length is forty-five miles ; greatest breadth eighteen. The city of Rhodes, one of the best built 
 and most magnificent cities of the ancient world, was at the north-eastern extremity of the 
 island. The celebrated colossus of Rhodes, a brazen statue of Apollo, about one hundred 
 and five feet in height, and of the most admirable proportions, has been deservedly reckoned 
 one of the seven wonders of the world ; but the assertion that it stood with a foot on each side 
 the entrance to the port, and that the largest vessels, under full sail, passed between its legs, is 
 an absurd fiction, for which there is not the shadow of authority in any ancient writer. The 
 story originated with one Blaise de Vigenere, in the 16th century. (Map No. IV.) 
 
 3. Tripoli, a maritime city of northern Africa, is west of the ancient Barca and Cyrenaica, 
 and about two hundred and seventy miles south from Sicily. 
 
 a. Sismondi, ii. p. 18, distrusts the common account of the loss of the Alexandrian library. 
 Gibbon, vol. iii. p. 439, says, "For my own part, I am strongly tempted to deny both the fa<:t 
 and the consequences." But since Gibbon wrote, several new Moham medan authorities hare 
 been adduced to s ipport the common version of the story. See Note to Gibbon, iii. 522 ; also 
 Crichton a Arabia, 1. 355.
 
 CHAP. II.] MIDDLE AGES. 251 
 
 military events that distinguished the reign of Othman ; but the 
 political feuds and civil wars that distracted the reign of his suc- 
 cessors, Ali and Moawiyah, suspended the progress of the western 
 conquests of the Saracens nearly twenty years. 3 - Gradually, how- 
 ever, the Saracens extended their dominion over all northern Africa; 
 and in the year 689 one of their generals penetrated to the Atlantic 
 coast ; but Carthage, repeatedly succored from Constantinople, held 
 out nine years longer, when being taken by storm, it was finally and 
 utterly destroyed. From this epoch northern Africa became a section 
 of the great Moham' medan empire. All the Moorish tribes, resembling 
 the roving Arabs in their customs, and born under a similar climate, 
 being ultimately reduced to submission, adopted the language, name, 
 and religion, of their conquerors ; and at the present day they can 
 with difficulty be distinguished from the Saracens. 
 
 34. Scarcely had the conquest of Africa been completed, when a 
 Vis' igothic noble, irritated by the treatment which he had received 
 from his sovereign, the tyrant Roderic, secretly despatched a mes- 
 senger to Musa, the governor of Africa, and invited the Saracens 
 into Spain. A daring Saracen, named Taric, first crossed the straits 
 in the month of July, 710, on a predatory incursion ; and in the fol- 
 lowing spring he passed over again at the head of seven thousand 
 men and took possession of Mount Calpe, whose modern name of 
 Gibraltar (Gribel-al-Taric, or Hill of Taric), still preserves the name 
 of the Saracen hero. 
 
 35. When Roderic was informed of the descent of the Saracens, 
 he sent his lieutenant against them, with orders to bind the pre- 
 sumptuous strangers and cast them into the sea. But his lieutenant 
 was defeated, and soon afterward, Roderic himself also, who had 
 collected, on the banks of the Guadalete, 1 his whole army, of a hun- 
 dred thousand men. Roderic, a usurper and tyrant, was hated and 
 despised by numbers of his people ; and during the battle, which 
 continued seven days, a portion of his forces, as had been previously 
 
 .' The Quadalete is a stream that enters the harbor of Cadiz, about sixty miles north-west 
 from Gibraltar. The battle appears to have been fought on the plains of the modern Xeres de 
 la, Frontera, about ten miles north-west from Cadiz. {Map No. XIII.) 
 
 a. Mahom' et had promised forgiveness of sins to the first army which should besiege the 
 Byzantine capital ; and no sooner had Moawiyah destroyed his rivals and established his 
 throne, than he sought to expiate the guilt of civil blood by shedding that of 'the infidels ; 
 bui during ever; summer for seven years (668675) a Mussulman army in vain attacked the 
 walls of Conslantinople, and the tide of conquest was turned aside to seek another channel for 
 ;t entrance into Europe.
 
 252 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II. 
 
 arranged, deserted to the Saracens. The Goths were finally routed 
 with immense slaughter, and Roderic avoided a soldier's death only 
 to perish more ignobly in the waters of the Guadalquiver i 1 but the 
 victory of the Saracens was purchased at the expense of sixteen 
 thousand lives. Most of the Spanish towns now submitted without 
 opposition ; Mer' ida, 2 the capital, after a desperate resistance, ca- 
 pitulated with honor ; and before the end of the year 713 the whole 
 of Spain, except a solitary corner in the northern part of the penin- 
 sula, was conquered. The same country, in a more savage state, had 
 resisted, for two hundred years, the arms of the Romans ; and it re- 
 quired nearly eight hundred years to regain it from the sway of the 
 Moors and Saracens. 
 
 36. After the conquest of Spain, Mussulman ambition began to 
 look beyond the Pyrenees: 3 the disunited Gallic tribes of the 
 Southern provinces soon began to negotiate and to submit ; and in a 
 few years the south of France, from the mouth of the Garonne to 
 that of the Rhone, 4 assumed the manners and religion of Arabia. 
 But these narrow limits were scorned by the spirit of Abdelrahuian, 
 the Saracen governor of Spain, who, in the year 732, entered Gaul 
 at the head of a host of Moors and Saracens, in the hope of adding 
 to the faith of the Koran whatever yet remained unsubdued of France 
 or of Europe. 'An invasion so formidable had not been witnessed 
 since the days of At' tila ; and Abdelrahman marked his route with 
 fire and sword ; for he spared neither the country nor the inhabit- 
 ants. 
 
 37. Everything was swept away by the overpowering torrent, until 
 Abdelrahman had penetrated to the very centre of France, and 
 
 1. The river Guadalquiver (in English gau-d'l-quiv'-er, in Spanish gwad-al-ke-veer'), on 
 which stands the cities Seville and Cor' dova, enters the Atlantic about fifteen miles north from 
 Cadiz. Its ancient name was Battis : its present appellation, Wady-al-kcbir, signifying " the 
 great river," is Arabic. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. Mcr' ida, the Augusta Emer' ita of the Romans, whence its modern name, was founded 
 by Augustus Caesar 25 B. C. It is in the south-western part of Spain, on the north bank of the 
 Guadiana, and in the province of Estremadura. It is now a decayed town ; but the architec- 
 tural remains of the power and magnificence of its Roman masters render it an object of great 
 interest. It remained in the hands of the Saracens from 713 to 1228, when it opened its gates to 
 Alphonao IX., after his signal victory over the Moors ; and from this period downward, it haa 
 been attached to the kingdoms of Castile and Leon. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 3. The Pyrenees mountains, which separate Spain from France, extend from the Atlantic to 
 the Mediterranean, a distance of about two hundred and seventy miles, with an average breadth 
 of about thirty-eight miles. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 4. For the territory thus embraced under the Saracen sway, see Map No. XIII. The Garonne, 
 rising near the Spanish border, runs a north-westerly course. From its union with the Dor- 
 dogne, forty-flve miles from its entrance into the Bay of Biscay, it is calldl the Gironde. from, 
 which th noted " department of the Gironde" takes its name.
 
 CHAP. II.] MIDDLE AGES. 253 
 
 pitched his camp between Tours 1 and Pole-tiers. 2 His progress had 
 not been unwatched by the confederacy of the Franks, which, torn 
 asunder by intrigues, and the revolts of discontented chiefs, now 
 united to oppose the common enemy of all Christendom. At the 
 head of the confederacy was Charles Martel, who, collecting his 
 forces, met Abddrahman on the plains of Poictiers, and, after sis 
 days' skirmishing, engaged on the seventh in that fearful battle that 
 was to decide the fate of Europe. In the light skirmishing the 
 archers of the East maintained the advantage ; but in the close 
 onset of the deadly strife, the German auxiliaries of Charles, grasp- 
 ing their ponderous swords with " stout hearts and iron hands" stood 
 tothe shock like walls of stone, and beat down the light armed 
 Arabs with terrific slaughter. Abdelrahman, and, as was reported 
 by the monkish historians of the period, three hundred and seventy- 
 five thousand * of his followers, were slain. The Arabs never re- 
 sumed the conquest of Gaul, although twenty-seven years elapsed 
 before they were wholly driven beyond the Pyrenees. Europe to 
 this day owes its civil and religious freedom to the victory gained 
 over the Saracens before Poictiers, by Charles, the Hammer* which 
 shattered the Saracen forces. 
 
 38. About the time of the conquest of Spain, the Saracens made 
 a second unsuccessful attempt to reduce the Byzantine capital; 
 but farther east they were more successful, and extended their do- 
 minion and their religion into Hindostan',' and the frozen regions 
 
 1. Tours is situated between the rivers Cher and Loire, near the point of their confluence, 
 one hundred and twenty-seven miles south-west from Paris. Tours was anciently the capital 
 of the Turones, conquered by Csesar 55 B. C. After many vicissitudes it fell into the hands 
 of the Plantagenets, and formed part of the English dominions till 1204, when it was annexed 
 to the French crown. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. Poictiers, or Poitiers, (anciently called ].im6num, and afterward Pictavi,) sixty miles 
 Bouth-west from Tours, is the capital of the department of Vienne. It is one of the mosl 
 ancient towns of Gaul ; and the vestiges of a Roman palace, an aqueduct, and an amphith. 
 atre, are still visible. Besides the celebrated defeat of the Saracens in 732, Poictiers is mem- 
 orable for the signal victory obtained in its vicinity Sept. 19th, 1356, by an English army 
 commanded by Edward the Black Prince, over a vastly superior French force commanded bj 
 king John. (See p. 300. .Wv > T o. XIII.) 
 
 3. Hindostan', a vast triangular country beyond the Indus, and south of the Himalaya 
 mountains the country of the Hindoos has no authentic early history, although there is evi- 
 dence to show that it was one of the early seats of Eastern civilization. The incursion of Al- 
 exander (325 B. C.) first made Hindostan' known to the European world. In the oarly pan o 
 the llth century it was repeatedly invaded by the Moham' medans of Aflghanistan, who, in 
 
 a. This was probably the whole number of the Mussulman force, not the number slain. So 
 Crichton's Arabia, i. 409, Note. 
 
 b. Charles wielded a huge mace ; and the epithet of " le martel," or the Hammer" u ex 
 pressive of the resistless force with which he dealt his blows.
 
 254 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II. 
 
 of Tartary. ]>ut the animosities of contending sects, domestic broils, 
 revolts, assassinations, and civil wars, had long been weakening iht 
 central power which held together the unwieldy Saracen empire ; 
 and before the close of the eighth century, the civil power of the 
 contra! caliphate had broken into fragments, although the spiritual 
 power of the religion of the Prophet still maintained its ascendancy 
 in all the regions that had once adopted the Moslem faith. 
 
 39. We have thus briefly traced the history of the rise and es- 
 tablishment of the civil power and the religion of the Saracens, and 
 their progress until effectually checked by the arms of the Franks 
 and their confederates on the plains of Poictiers. The power which 
 thus obtrudes upon our view, as the bulwark and defence of Christ- 
 endom, is the one that next prominently occupies the field of History, 
 while that of the Saracens, weakened and distracted by its divisions, 
 declines in historical interest and importance. 
 
 40. The origin of the monarchy of the Franks is generally traced 
 
 back nearly two centuries and a half prior to the defeat 
 MONARCHY of the Saracens by Charles Martel, about the era of the 
 OF THE downfall of the Western empire of the Romans. It is 
 said that the Germanic tribes of the Franks or Free- 
 men, occupied, at this early period, four cities in north-eastern or 
 Belgic Gaul, viz. : Tournai, 1 Cambray, 2 Terouane, 3 and Cologne,* 
 which were governed by four separate kings, all of whom ascribed 
 their origin to Merovasus, a half fabulous hero, whose rule is dated 
 back a century and a half earlier. Of the four kings of the Franks, 
 
 1193, made Delhi their capital. In 1225 the country was conquered by Baber, the fifth in de- 
 scent from "Titnour the Tartar;" and with him began a race of Mogul princes. Arungzebe, 
 who died in 1707, was the greatest of the Mogul sovereigns. The discovery of a passage to 
 India, by way of the Cape of Good Hope, opened the country to a new and more formidable 
 race of conquerors. The Portuguese, the Dutch, and the French, obtained possession of por- 
 tions of the Indian territory ; but in the end they were overpowered by the English, whp have 
 e; tablished beyond the Indus a great Asiatic empire. 
 
 1. Tournay, a town of Belgium, on the river Scheldt, (skelt) forty-five miles south-west from 
 Brussels, and one hundred and thirty north-east from Paris, is the Civ' itas Jfervidrum taken 
 by Julius Caesar. It has since belonged to an almost infinite number of masters. (Map No. XV.) 
 
 2. Cambray on the Scheldt, (skelt) is thirty-three miles south from Tournay. It was a city 
 of considerable importance under the Romans, and has been the scene of many important 
 events in modern history. It was long famous for its manufacture of fine linens and lawns; 
 whence all similar fabrics are called, in English, cambrics. (Map No. XV.) 
 
 3. Terouane (ter-oo-an') appears to have been west from Brussels, near Dunkirk. 
 
 4. Cologne is in the present Prussia, on the left bank of the Rhine, one hundred and twelve 
 miles east from Brussels. A Roman colony was planted in Cologne by Agrippina, the daughter of 
 German' i<us, who was born there. Hence it obtained the name of Jlgrippina Culonia : after- 
 wards it w is cUled CoMnia, or "the colony," whence the Urn Cologne. (Map No. XVIL)
 
 CHAP. IL] MIDDLE AGES. . 255 
 
 the ambitious Clovis, a who ruled over the tribe at Tournai was the 
 most powerful. Being joined by the tribe at Cambray, he made 
 war upon the last remains of the Koman power in Gaul ; enlarged 
 his territory by conquest, and established his capital at Soissons. 1 
 (A. D. 484.) At a later period he transferred the seat of sovereignty 
 to Paris ;" (A. D. 494) and at the time of his death, in 511, nearly 
 the half of modern France, embracing that portion north of the Loire, 
 was comprised in the monarchy of which he is the reputed founder. 1 * 
 
 41. Clovis, like many of the barbarian chiefs of that period, was 
 a nominal convert to Christianity ; and being the first of his nation 
 who embraced the orthodox faith, he received from the Gaulish 
 clergy the title of most Christian king, which has been retained by 
 his successors to the present day. But his religion, a matter of mere 
 form, seems to have exerted no influence in restraining the natural 
 ferocity and blood thirstiness of his disposition, as all the rival mon- 
 archs or chieftains whom he could conquer or entrap were sacrificed 
 to his jealousy and ambition. He put to death with his own hand 
 most of his relations, and then, pretending to repent of his barbari- 
 ty, he offered his protection to all who had escaped the massacre, 
 hoping thus to discover if any survived, that he might rid himself 
 of them also. 
 
 42. The descendants of Clovis, who are called Merovingians, from 
 their supposed founder, reigned over the Franks for nearly two cen 
 turies and a half; but the repulsive annals of this long and barba 
 rous period are one tissue of perfidy and crime. It was usually the 
 first act of a monarch, on ascending the throne, to put to death his 
 brothers, uncles, and nephews ; and thus consanguinity generally led 
 to the most deadly and fatal enmity. These murders so thinned the 
 race of Clovis as often to produce the reign of kings under age ; 
 
 1. Soissons, (sooah-song) now a fortified town on the river Aisne. sixty-eight miles north- 
 east from Paris, anciently Noeiodunum, was a city of the Sucssnn.es, in Belgic Gaul, which 
 submitted to Julius Ciesar. Here Clovis extinguished the last remains of the Western empire 
 l>y his victory over the Roman general Syagrius. The town then became the capital of the 
 Franks, and, afterwards, of a kingdom of its own name, in the sixth and seventh centuries. 
 ,J\Iu), No. XIII.) 
 
 2. Pur!j_ the metropolis of France, is situated on the river Seine, (sane) one hundred and 
 ten miles from its mouth, and two hundred and ten miles south-east from London. When 
 Gaul was invaded by Julius Caesar, Paris, then called iMtetia, was the chief town of the 
 Belgic tribe of the Paris' ii, whence the city derives its modern name. It was at Lutfitia 
 that Julian the Apostate was saluted emperor by his soldiers. {Map No. XIII.) 
 
 a. The Roman corruption of Chlodwig. or, in modern German, Ludwig: in modern French 
 Louis. Sismondi, i. 175, Note. 
 
 b. Se Wcustria, Note, p. 272.
 
 256 , MODERN HISTORY. [PART II 
 
 and eventually the custom was established of electing regents or 
 guardians for them, who, by exercising the royal functions during the 
 minority of their wards, acquired a power above that of the monarch 
 himself. At the time of the Saracen invasion of France, Charles 
 Martel the guardian of the nominal sovereign, governed France with 
 the humble title of mayor or duke. His son Pepin succeeded him, 
 and during the minority of his royal ward, the imbecile Childerio 
 III., wielded the power, without assuming the name and honors of 
 royalty ; but at length, in 752, he threw off the mask, obtained a 
 decree of pope Zachary in his favor, dethroned the last of the Mero- 
 vingian kings, and caused himself to be crowned in the presence of 
 the assembled nation, the first monarch of the Carlovingian dynasty. 
 It was upon this occasion that the popes first exercised the authority 
 of enthroning and dethroning kings. 1 
 
 43. Of the reign and the character of Pepin we know little, ex- 
 cept that he exhibited a profound deference for the priesthood, and 
 was engaged in a long struggle *yith the former German allies of the 
 Franks ; and that at the time of his death, in 768, there was no 
 portion of Gaul that was not subject to the French monarchy. He 
 divided his kingdom between his two sons, Charles the elder, usually 
 called Charlemagne, and Carloman the younger ; to the former of 
 whom he bequeathed the western portion of the empire, and to the 
 latter, the eastern ; but as Carloman died soon after, Charles stripped 
 
 1. The frequent allusions made in history to papal authority and papal supremacy, render 
 necessary some explanation of the growth of the papal power. 
 
 The word pope comes from the Greek word papa, and signifies father. In the early times of 
 Christianity this appellation was given to all Christian priests ; but during many centuries past 
 it has been appropriated to the Bishop of Rome, whom the Roman Catholics look upon as the 
 common father of all Christians. 
 
 Roman Catholics believe that Jesus Christ constituted St. Peter the chief pastor to watch 
 over his whole flock here on earth that he is to have successors to the end of time and that 
 the bishops of Rome, elected by the cardinals or chief of the Romish clergy, are his legitimate 
 successors, popes, or fathers of the church, who have power and jurisdiction over all Christiana, 
 in order to preserve unity and purity of faith, doctrine, and worship. 
 
 During a long period after the introduction of Christianity into Rome, the bishops of Rome 
 were merely fathers of the Church, and possessed no temporal power. It was customary 
 however, to consult the pope in temporal matters ; and the powerful Pepin found no difficulty 
 in obtaining a papal decision in favor of dethroning the imbecile Childeric, and inducing the 
 pope to come to Paris to officiate at his coronation. Soon after, in 755, Pepin invested the 
 pope with the exarchate of Raven' na ; and it is at this point the union of temporal and 
 spiritual jurisdiction that the proper history of the papacy begins. Charlemagne and suc- 
 ceeding princes added other provinces to the papal government ; but a long struggle for su- 
 premacy followed, between the popes and the German emperors ; and under the pontificate 
 of Gregory VII., towards the close of the eleventh century, the claims of the Roman pontiffs 
 to ropremacy over all the sovereigns of the earth, were boldly asserted as the basu of the po- 
 litical system of the papacy.
 
 CHAP. II.] MIDDLE AGES. 257 
 
 his .brother's widow and children of their inheritance, which he added 
 to his own dominions. 
 
 44. The first acts of the reign of Charlemagne showed the warrior 
 eager for conquest 5 for, advancing with an army beyond the Loire, 1 
 he compelled the Aquitanians, who had been subdued by Pepin, but 
 had since revolted, to submit to his authority. His next enemies 
 were the Saxons, who bounded his dominions on the north-east, and 
 whose territories extended along the German ocean from the Elbe 2 
 to the Rhine. While all the other German tribes had adopted 
 Christianity, the Saxons still sacrificed to the gods of their fathers ; 
 and it was both the desire of chastising their repeated aggressions, 
 and the merit to be derived from their conversion to Christianity, 
 that led Charlemagne to declare war against these fierce barbari- 
 ans. (A. D. 772.) 
 
 45. His first irruption into the Saxon territory was successful ; for 
 he destroyed the pagan idols, received hostages, and on the banks of 
 the Weser 3 concluded an advantageous peace. But the free spirit of 
 the Saxons was not quelled : again and again they rose in insurrec- 
 tion, headed by the famous Witikind, a hero worthy of being the 
 rival of Charlemagne ; and the war continued, with occasional inter 
 ruption, during a period of thirty-two years. At length, however, 
 peace was granted to Witikind, who received baptism, Charlemagne 
 himself acting as sponsor ; and Saxony submitted to the Frankish 
 institutions, as well as to those of Christianity. A few years 
 later the Saxon youth, who had taken no share in the previous con- 
 flicts, arose in rebellion, but they were eventually subjugated, 
 (A. D. 804,) when ten thousand of their number were transported 
 into the country of the Franks, where they were gradually merged 
 into the nation of their conquerors. It was in the midst of the 
 ravages of these Saxon wars that the north of Germany passed from 
 barbarism to civilization ; for monasteries, churches, and bishoprics, 
 immediately sprung up in the path of the conquerors ; and although 
 
 1. The Loire, (looar) (anciently Lig-er), is the principal river of France, through the central 
 part of which it flows, in a W. direction to the Atlantic. Its basin comprises nearly one-fourth 
 part of the kingdom. The Loire was the northern boundary of the country of the -Iquit&nians. 
 The early seat of the empire of Charlemagne was therefore north of the Loire. (Map 
 No : XIII.) 
 
 2. The F.lbe, (anciently Jtt' bis,) rising in the mountains of Bohemia, flows north-west 
 through central Europe, and enters the German ocean, or North sea, at the southern extremity 
 of Denmark. This stream was the easternmost extent of the Germanic expeditions of the Ro- 
 mans. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. The Weser, (anciently Visur' gis,) a river of Germany, enters the north sea between the 
 Kibe on the east and the Ems cm the west. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 17
 
 258 MODERN HISTORY. [PAW EL 
 
 the religion which they planted was superficial and corrupt, they at 
 least diffused some respect for the arts of civilized life. 
 
 46. Soon after the commencement of the Saxon wars, Charle- 
 magne found another, but less formidable enemy, in the Lombards 
 of Italy. The Lombard king had given protection to the widow of 
 Carloman, the deceased brother of Charlemagne, and had required 
 pope Adrian to anoint her sons as kings of the Franks ; and upon 
 Adrian's refusal, he threatened to carry war into his little territory 
 of a few square miles around Rome. The pope demanded aid from 
 Charlemagne, who, assembling his warriors at Geneva, 1 crossed the 
 Alps into Italy and compelled the Lombard king, Desiderius, to 
 shut himself up in his capital at Pavia, 3 which, after a siege of six 
 months, surrendered. Desiderius became prisoner, and was sent to 
 end his days in a monastery, while Charlemagne, placing the iron 
 crown of the Lombards upon his head, caused himself to be pro- 
 claimed king of Italy. (774.) 
 
 47. A few years after the overthrow of the kingdom of the Lom- 
 bards, Charlemagne carried his conquering arms into Spain, whither 
 he had been invited by the viceroy of Catalonia, 8 to aid him against 
 the Moham' medans. (677-8.) Pampeluna 4 and Saragos' sa 6 were 
 dismantled, and the Arab princes of that region swore fealty to the 
 conqueror, but on the return of Charlemagne across the Pyrenees, 
 his rear guard was attacked in the famous pass of Roncesvalles. 6 and 
 
 1. Geneva, described by Caesar as being " the frontier town of the Allobrogians," retains iui 
 ancient name. It is on the Rhone, at the south-western extremity of the Lake of Geneva, 
 (anciently I.emari nus), and is the most populous city of Switzerland. In the year 420 it was 
 taken by the Burgun' dians, and became their capital. It afterwards belonged, successively, to 
 the Os' trogoths and Franks, and also to the second kingdom of Bur' gundy. On the fall of the 
 latter it was governed by its own bishops ; but at the time of the Reformation the bishops 
 were expelled, and Geneva became a republic. (Maps No. XIV. and XVII.) 
 
 2. Pavia, (anciently Ticiitum,) is situated on the Ticino (anciently Ticinus,) north of the Fo, 
 and twenty miles south from Milan. Pavia has sustained many sieges, but is principally dis- 
 tinguished for the great battle fought in its vicinity Feb. 24th, 15-25. See p. 327. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. CatalonifL was the north-western province of Spain. It was successively subject to the 
 Romans, Goths, and Moors; but in the 8th and 9th centuries, in connection with the adjoining 
 French province of Rons' sillon, it became an independent State, subject to the counts or earls 
 of Barcelona. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 4. Pampeluna, a fortified city of Spain, supposed to have been built by Pompey after the de- 
 fsat of Sertorius, (see p. 176,) is a short distance south of the Pyrenees, and forty miles from 
 the Bay of Biscay. It was the capital of the kingdom, now province, of Navarre. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 5. Saragos' sa, (anciently (Itesar Augusta) situated in a fine plain on the Fbro, (anciently 
 /icrus,) is eighty-seven milss south-east from I'umpeluna. It is a very ancient city, and is 
 eaid to have been founded by the Phmmcians or Carthaginians. Julius Caesar greatly enlarged 
 it, and Augustus gave it the name of Ctesar Augusta, with the privileges of a free colony. 
 (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 6. RoncesvMes (Run'-sa-val) is about twenty miles north-east from Pumpeluna. (Map No. XIII.)
 
 CHAP. IL] MIDDLE AGES. ' 259 
 
 entirely cut to pieces. Poesy and fable have combined to render 
 memorable a defeat of which history has preserved no details. 
 
 48. After Charlemagne had extended his empire over France, 
 Germany, and Italy, minor conquests easily followed ; and many of 
 the other surrounding nations, or rather tribes, fell under his power, 
 or solicited his protection. Thus the dominion of the Franks pene- 
 trated into Hungary, aud advanced upon the Danube as far as the 
 frontiers of the Greek empire. A conspiracy in Rome having forced 
 the pope to seek the protection of Charlemagne, in the year 800 
 the latter visited Rome in person to punish the evil doers. While 
 he was there attending services in St. Peter's Church, at the Christ- 
 inas festival, the gratified pontiff placed upon his head a crown of 
 gold, and, in the formula observed for the Roman emperors, and 
 amid the acclamations of the people, saluted him by the titles of 
 Emperor and Augustus. This act was considered as indicating the 
 revival of the Empire of the West, after an interruption of about 
 three centuries. 
 
 49. Charlemagne, a king of the German Franks, was thus seated 
 on the throne of the Caesars. Nor was the circumstance of his re 
 ceiving the imperial crown unimportant, as by the act he declared 
 himself the representative of the ancient Roman civilization, and not 
 of the barbarism of its destroyers. In Italy, Charlemagne sought 
 teachers for the purpose of establishing public schools throughout 
 his dominions : he encouraged literature, and attempted to revive 
 commerce ; and his capital of Aix-la-Chapelle 1 he so adorned with 
 sumptuous edifices, palaces, churches, bridges, and monuments of art, 
 as to give it the appearance of a Roman city. By the wisdom of 
 his laws, and the energy which he displayed in executing them, he 
 established order and regularity, and gave protection to all parts of 
 his empire. But with all the greatness of Charlemagne, his private 
 life was not free from the stain of licentiousness ; and where his 
 ambition led him he was unsparing of blood. He caused four thou 
 sand five hundred imprisoned Saxons to be beheaded in one day, as 
 a terrible example to their countrymen, and as an act of retribution 
 for an army which he had lost ; and as a right of conquest he de- 
 nounced the penalty of death against those who refused baptism, or 
 who even eat flesh during Lent. Still his long reign is a brilliant 
 
 I. Mx-la-Chipelle (a-la-shappcl') the favorite residence of Charlemagne, is an old and 
 well-built city af Prussian Germany, west of the Rhine, and seventy-eight miles east from 
 Brussels. (Jtfa. No. XIII. and XVII.)
 
 ' MODERN BISTORT. [PART II 
 
 period in the history of the middle ages ; the inoie interesting, from 
 the preceding chaos of disorder, and the disgraces and miseries which 
 followed it ; resembling the course of a meteor that leaves the dark- 
 ness still more dreary as it disappears. 
 
 50. The posterity of Charlemagne were unequal to the task of 
 preserving the empire which he had formed, and it speedily fell 
 asunder by its own weight. To the mutual antipathies of different 
 races, the German on the one side, including the Franks, knit to- 
 gether by their old Teutonic tongue, and the nation of mingled 
 Gallic, Koman, and Barbarian origin, on the other, which afterwards 
 assumed the name of Franks, and gave to their own country the 
 appellation France, was added the rivalry of the Carlovingian 
 princes ; and about thirty years after the death of Charlemagne 
 (A. D. 814), at the close of a period of anarchy and civil war, the 
 empire was divided among his descendants, and out of it were con- 
 stituted the separate kingdoms, France, Germany, and Italy 
 (A. D. 843.)* 
 
 51. The motive that led the Carlovingian princes to put an end 
 to their unnatural wars with each other, was the repeated invasion 
 of the coasts of France and Germany by piratical adventurers from 
 the north, called Northmen or Danes, a branch of the great Teutonic 
 race, who, issuing from all the shores of the Baltic, annually ravaged 
 the coasts of their more civilized neighbors, and, by hasty incur- 
 sions, even pillaged the cities far in the interior. During more than 
 a century these Northern pirates continued to devastate the shores 
 of Western Europe, particularly infesting the coasts of Britain, 
 Ireland, and France. 
 
 52. In the meantime central Europe became a prey to the Hun- 
 garians, a warlike Tartarian tribe, whose untamed ferocity recalled 
 the memory of At' tila. The Saracens also, masters of the Medi- 
 terranean, kept the coasts of Italy in constant alarm, and twice in- 
 sulted and ravaged the territory of Rome. Amid the tumult and 
 confusion thus occasioned, European society was undergoing a 
 change, from the absolutism of imperial authority to the establish- 
 ment of numerous dukedoms, having little more than a nominal de- 
 pendence upon the reigning princes. Power was transferred from 
 the palace of the king to the castle of the baron ; and for a time 
 European history, that of France in particular is occupied with 
 the annals of an intriguing, factious, aspiring nobility, rather than 
 
 a. By the treaty of Verdun, Aug. lltb, 843.
 
 CHAP. H.] MIDDLE AGES. 261 
 
 with those of monarchs and the people. From the confusion inci- 
 dent to such a state of society we turn to the neighboring island of 
 Britain, where, a few years after the dissolution of the empire of 
 Charlemagne, the immortal Alfred arose, drove back the tide of bar- 
 barian conquest, and laid the foundation of those laws and institu- 
 tions which have rendered England the most enlightened and most 
 powerful of the nations of Europe. 
 
 53. We have mentioned that, towards the close of the sixth cen- 
 tury, the Saxon tribes from the shores of the Baltic had made them- 
 selves masters of the southern and more fertile provinces VIIt 
 
 of Britain. After having extirpated the ancient British ENGLISH 
 population, or driven it into Cornwall and Wales on the 
 western side of the island, the kindred tribes of the Angles and Sax- 
 ons, under the common name of Anglo Saxons, established in England 
 seven independent kingdoms, which are known in history as the Saxon 
 Heptarchy. The intricate details, so far as we can learn them, of the 
 history of these kingdoms, are uninteresting and unimportant ; and 
 from the period of the first inroads of the Saxons down to the 
 time of the coronation of Alfred the Great in 872, the chronicles of 
 Britain present us with the names of numerous kings, the dates of 
 many battles, and frequent revolutions attended with unimportant 
 results; the history of all which is in great part conjectural, and 
 gives us little insight into individual or national character. 
 
 54. It appears that about the year 597 Christianity was first intro 
 duced into England by the monk Augustine, accompanied by forty 
 missionaries, who had been sent out by pope Gregory for the con- 
 version of the Britons. The new faith, such as it pleased the church 
 to promulgate, being received cordially by the kings, descended from 
 them to their subjects, and was established without persecution, and 
 without the shedding of the blood of a single martyr. The religious 
 zeal of the Anglo Saxons greatly exceeded that of the nations of the ' 
 continent ; and it is recorded that, during the Heptarchy, ten kings 
 and eleven queens laid aside the crown to devote themselves to a 
 monastic life. 
 
 55. In the year 827 the several kingdoms of the Saxon Hep- 
 tarchy were united in one great State by Egbert, prince of the Wes^ 
 Saxons, an ambitious warrior, who exhibits some points of compari- 
 son with his illustrious cotemporary Charlemagne, at whose court he 
 had spent twelve years of his early life. The Saxon union, under the 
 firm administration of Egbert, promised future tranquillity to the in
 
 262 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 habitants of Biitain ; but scarcely had a regular government been es- 
 tablished when the piratical Scandinavians, known in France under 
 the name of Normans, and in England by that of Danes, landed in 
 the southern part of the island, and after a bloody battle with Eg- 
 bert at Charmouth in Dorsetshire, made good their retreat to their 
 ships, carrying off all the portable wealth of the district. (A. D. 833.) 
 This was the beginning of the ravages of the Northmen in England ; 
 and they continued to plunder the coasts for nearly two centuries. 
 
 56. From the death of Egbert in 838, to the accession of Alfred 
 the Great in 871, the throne of England was occupied by four Saxon 
 princes ; a and the whole of this period, like the corresponding one 
 in French history, is filled with the disastrous invasions of the Danes. b 
 In the course of a single year nine sanguinary battles were fought 
 between the Saxons and their invaders ; and in the last of these bat- 
 tles king Ethelred received a wound which caused his death 
 (871-2.) His brother Alfred, then only twenty-two years of age, 
 succeeded to the throne. He had served with distinction in the 
 numerous bloody battles fought by his brother ; but on his accession 
 he found nearly half the kingdom in the possession of the Danes ; 
 and within six years the almost innumerable swarms of these in- 
 vaders struck such terror into the English, that Alfred, who strove to 
 assemble an army, found himself suddenly deserted by all his war 
 riors. 
 
 57. Obliged to relinquish the ensigns of royalty, and to seek 
 shelter from the pursuit of his enemies, he disguised himself under 
 the habit of a peasant, and for some time lived in the cottage of a 
 goatherd, known only to his host, and regarded by his hostess as an 
 inferior, and occasionally intrusted by her with the menial duties of 
 the household. It is said that, as he was one day trimming his ar- 
 rows by the fire-side, she desired him to watch some cakes that were 
 baking, and that when, forgetting his trust, he suffered them to burn, 
 she severely upbraided him for his neglect. Afterwards, retiring 
 with a few faithful followers to the marshes of Somersetshire, he 
 built there a fortress, whence he made occasional successful sallies 
 upon the Danes, who knew not from what quarter the blow came. 
 While his very existence was unsuspected by the enemy, under the 
 
 a. Ethelwolf, Ethelbald, Ethelbert, and Ethelred. 
 
 b. As the term Normans was at a later period exclusively appropriated to that branch of the 
 Scandinavians which settled in Normandy, we shall follow the English writers and apply the 
 term Danes to those barbarians of the same family who so long ravaged the English coast*. 
 
 t should no', be forgotten by the reader that the Saxons also were of Scandinavian origin.
 
 CHAP. II] MIDDLE AGES. 263 
 
 disguise of a harper he visited their camp, where his musical skill 
 obtained for him a welcome reception, and an introduction to the 
 tent of the Danish prince, Guthrum. Here he spent three days, wit- 
 nessed the supine security of the enemy, thoroughly examined the 
 camp and its approaches, and then went to meet his countrymen, for 
 whom he had appointed a gathering in Selwood forest. a 
 
 58. The Saxons, inspired with new life and courage at the sight 
 of their beloved prince, whom they had supposed dead, fell upon the 
 unsuspecting Danes, and cut nearly all of them to pieces. (A. D. 878.) 
 Guthrum, and the small band of followers who escaped, were soon 
 besieged in a fortress, where they accepted the terms of peace that 
 were offered them. Guthrum embraced Christianity ; the greater 
 part of the Danes settled peaceably on the lands that were assigned 
 them, where they soon intermingled with the Saxons ; while the more 
 turbulent spirits went to join new swarms of their countrymen in 
 their ravages upon the French and German coasts. The shores of 
 England were unvisited, during several years, by the enemy, and 
 Alfred employed the interval of repose in organizing the future de- 
 fence of his kingdom. In early life he had visited Italy, and seen 
 the Greek and Roman galleys, which were greatly superior to 
 the Danish unarmed vessels, that were fitted only for transport. 
 Alfred now formed a navy ; and his vessels never' met those of the 
 Danes without the certain destruction of the latter. 
 
 59. The Danes, however, who had settled in England, still occu- 
 pied the greater part of the country, so that the acknowledged sov- 
 ereignty of Alfred did not extend over any of the countries north 
 ward of the city of London, and fifteen years after the defeat of 
 Guthrum, Hastings, another celebrated Danish chief, threatened to 
 deprive the English king of the limited possessions which he still re- 
 tained. After having plundered all the northern provinces of France, 
 Hastings appeared on the coast of Kent with three hundred and 
 thirty sail, and spreading his forces over the country, committed the 
 most dreadful ravages. (A. D. 893.) The Danes in the northern 
 parts of England joined him ; but they were everywhere defeated, 
 and eventually Hastings withdrew to his own country, taking back 
 with him the most warlike portion of the Danish population, from the 
 English channel to the frontiers of Scotland, after which the whole 
 of England no longer hesitated to acknowledge the authority of Al- 
 fred, although his power over the Danish population in the northern 
 
 a. At Brixton, on the borders of the forest, in Wiltshire. Wiltshire is east of Somerset.
 
 264 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II 
 
 part of the kingdom was still little more than nominal. He died 
 after a reign cf twenty-nine years and a-half, having deservedly at- 
 tained the appellation of Alfred the GREAT, and the title of founder 
 of the English monarchy. (A. D. 901.) 
 
 60. To Alfred the English ascribe the origin of many of those in- 
 stitutions which lie at the foundation of their nation's prosperity and 
 renown. As the founder of the English navy, he planted the seeds 
 of the maritime power of England : with him arose the grandeur 
 and prosperity of London, the place of the assembling of the national 
 parliament or body of prelates, earls, barons, and burghers, or depu- 
 ties from the English burghs, or associations of freemen : he made a 
 collection of the Saxon laws, to which he added others framed or 
 sanctioned by himself; he reformed the Saxon division of the country 
 into counties and shires ; divided the citizens into corporations of 
 tens and hundreds, with a regular system of inspection and police, 
 in which equals exercised a supervision over equals ; and in the mode 
 which he adopted of settling controversies, we trace the first indica- 
 tions of the glory of the English judiciary the trial by jury. The 
 cultivation of letters, which had been- interrupted at the first inva- 
 sion of the then barbarous Saxons, was revived by Alfred, who was, 
 himself, the most learned man in the kingdom : he founded schools 
 at Oxford the germ of the celebrated university of that name ; 
 and he set aside a considerable portion of his revenues for the pay- 
 ment of the salaries of teachers. The character of Alfred is almost 
 unrivalled in the annals of any age or nation ; and in the details of 
 his private life we cannot discover a vice, or even a fault, to stain or 
 sully the spotlessness of his reputation. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 GENERAL HISTORY DURING THE TENTH, ELEVENTH, TWELFTH, AND THIR- 
 TEENTH CENTURIES: A. D. 900 TO 1300 = 400 TEARS. 
 
 I. COMPLETE DISSOLUTION OF THE BONDS OF SOCIETY. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. Causes of the CONFUSION OP HISTORIC MATERIALS at this period. 2. STATB 
 OF THE SARACKN WORLD. [Bagdad. Cor'dova. Khorassan'.] 3. THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 
 Turkish invasions and conquests. [Georgia.] 4. The divisions of the Carlovingian empire. 
 CONDITION OF ITALY. Berenger duke of Friuli. Prince of Burgundy. Hush count of Pro- 
 vence. Surrender of the kingdom to Otho. [Friuli. Switzerland. Provence.] 5. Italy under 
 the German emperors, Guelfa and Ghibelliues. Dukes, marquises, counts, and prelate*.
 
 CHAP. It] MIDDLE AGES. 265 
 
 Petty Italian republics. 6. CONDITION OF GERMANY. Its six dukedoms. [Saxony. Thurin'gia., 
 Franconia. Bavaria. Suabia. Lorraine.] Encroachments of the dukes. Reign of Conrad. 
 Henry I. of Saxony. Powers of the Saxon rulers. 7. CONDITION OF FRANCE. Charles the 
 Simple. Other princes. Deposition of Charles. [Transjurane Burgundy. Provence. Brit- 
 tany.] 8. Settlement of the Northmen in France. [Normandy.] Importance of this event 
 9. The counts of Paris. Hugh Capet. [Rheims.] Situation of France for two hundred and 
 forty years after the accession of Hugh Capet. 
 
 II. THE FEUDAL, SYSTEM ; CHIVALRY ; AND THE CRUSADES. 
 
 1. Europe in the central period of the Middle Ages. Origin of the FEUDAL SYSTEM, Its 
 duration and importance. 2. Partition of lands by the barbarians who overthrew the Roman 
 empire. Conditions of the allotment. Gradations of the system. 3. Nature of the estates 
 thus obtained. Crown lauds how disposed of. The word feud. 4. The feudal system in 
 France. Charlemagne's efforts to check its progress. Effects upon the nobility. Growth of 
 the power of the nobles after the overthrow of royal authority. Their petty sovereignties. 5. 
 Condition of the allodial proprietors. They are forced to become feudal tenants. 6. Legal 
 qualities and results that grew out of the feudal system. Reliefs, fines, escheats, aids, ward- 
 ship and marriage. 7. The feudal government in its best state. Its influence on the character 
 of society. General ignorance at this period. Sentiments of independence in the nobility. 
 
 8. Rise of CHIVALRY. Our first notices of it. Us origin. 9. Its rapid spread, and its good 
 effects. 10. Its spirit based on. noble impulses. Extract from Hallam: From James. Cus- 
 toms and peculiarities of chivalry. Who were members of the institution. 11. The profession 
 of arms among the Germans. Education of a knight. The practice of knight-errantry. 12 
 Extent of chivalry in the llth century. Its spirit led to the crusades. 
 
 ORIGIN OF THE CRUSADES. 13. Pilgrimages to Jerusalem. General expectation of the ap- 
 proaching end of the world. 14. Extortion and outrage practiced upon the pilgrims. Horror 
 and indignation excited thereby in Europe. The preaching of Peter the Hermit. [Amiens.]- 
 15. The councils of Placentia and Clermont. [Placentia and Clermont.] Gathering of the 
 crusaders for the FIRST CRUSADE. 16. Conduct and fate of the foremost bands of the cru- 
 saders. The genuine army of the crusade. [Bouillon.] 17. Conduct of Alexius, emperor of 
 Constantinople. His proposals spurned by the crusaders. 18. Number of the crusaders col- 
 lected in Asia Minor. First encounter with the Turks. [Nice. Bithyn'ia. Roum.] The 
 march to Syria. [Dorilse' um.] 19. The siege and capture of Aulioch. The Persian and 
 Turkish hosts defeated before the town. 20. Civil wars among the Turks. The caliph of Egypt 
 takes Jerusalem. Proposal to unite his forces with the Christians rejected. 21. March of the 
 crusaders to Jerusalem. [Mt. Lib' anus. Trip'oli. Tyre. Acre. Cresarea.] Transports of 
 the Christians on the first view of the city. Attack, and repulse. 22. Capture of Jerusalem. 
 Acts of veneration and worship. Reception given to Peter the Hermit. His ultimate fate. 
 23. The new government of Jerusalem. Minor Christian States. Defenceless state of Jerusa- 
 lem under Godfrey. Continued pilgrimages. Orders of knighthood established at Jerusalem. 
 The noted valor of the knights. 
 
 24. Continued yearly emigration of pilgrim warriors to the Holy Land. Six principal cru- 
 sades. Their general character. 25. The SECOND CRUSADE. The leading army under Conrad. 
 The army of French and Germans. 28. Jerusalem taken by Saladin. The THIRD CRUSADE. 
 Fate of the German emperor. Successes of the French and English. Return of Philip. 
 Richard concludes a truce with Saladin. [Ascalon.] 27. The FOURTH CRUSADE, led by Boni- 
 face. The crusaders take Zara, and conquer Constantinople. No benefit to Palesjne. [MouU 
 xerrat. Zara.] 28. The FIFTH CRUSADK. Partial successes, and final ruin, of the expedition. 
 [Damietta.] Expedition of the German emperor, Frederic II. Treaty with the sultan, by 
 which Jerusalem is yielded to the Christians. Jerusalem again taken by the sultan, but re- 
 stored. 
 
 29. Cotemporary events in northern Asia. TARTAR CONQUESTS in Asia and in Europe. 
 [China. Russia. Kiev. Moscow.] Alarm of the Christian nations of Europe. Recall of the 
 conquering hordes. 30. The Corasmins. They overrun Syria and take Jerusalem, but are 
 finally expelled by the united Turks and Christians. 31. The SIXTH CRUSADE, led by Louis 
 EX., who attacks Egypt. The second crusade of Louis. Attack upon Carthage, Result of the 
 expedition. 32. Acre, the last stronghold of the Christians in Syria, taken by the Turks, 1291 
 Results of the Crusades. 
 
 M
 
 MODERN HISTORY. PART U 
 
 III. ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 1. Our last reference to the history of England. The present continuation. 2. Condition of 
 ENGLAND AFTER THK DEATH OP ALFRED. England during the reign of Ethelred II. Massacre 
 of the Danes. Effects of this impolitic measure. Canute. Recall of Ethelred. Edmund 
 Ironside. Canute sole monarch. 3. His conciliatory policy. His vast possessions. Character 
 of his administration of the government. 4. Harold aud Hardicanute. The reign of Edward 
 the Confessor. Events that disturbed his reign. Accession of Harold. The NORMAN 
 CONQUEST. [Sussex. Hastings.] 5. Gradual conquest of all England. William's treatment 
 of his conquered subjects. 0. The feudal system in England. The Doomsday Book. Saxoni 
 and Normans. 7. Reigns of William Rufus, and Henry I. 8. Usurpation and reign of Stephen, 
 Henry II. [Plantagenet.] 9. Henry's extensive possessions. REDUCTION OF IRELAND. [His- 
 tory of Ireland.] The troubles of Henry's reign. 10. Reign of Richard, the Lion Hearted. 11. 
 Reign of John, surnamed Lackland. Loss of his continental possessions. Quarrels with the 
 pope: with the barons. Mayna Charta. Civil war, and death of John. 12. The long reign 
 of Henry III. His difficulties with the barons. First germs of popular representation. 13. 
 The reign of Edward I. SUBJUGATION OF WALKS. [History of Wales.] 14. Relations be- 
 tween England and Scotland. The princess Margaret. 15. Baliol and Bruce. Beginning of 
 the SCOTTISH WARS. Submission of Baliol. [Dunbar.] 16. William Wallace recovers Scot- 
 land, but is defeated at Falkirk. [Stirling. Falkirk.] Fate of Wallace. 17. Robert Bruce 
 crowned king of Scotland. Edward II. defeated by him. [Scone. Bannockburn.] 
 
 18. Northern nations of Europe during this period. Wars between the Moors and Christians 
 in the Spanish peninsula. Final overthrow of the Saracen power in the peninsula. 
 
 1. COMPLETE DISSOLUTION OF THE BONDS OF SOCIETY. 1. The tenth 
 century brings us to the central period of what has been denomi- 
 nated the Middle Ages. The history of the known world presents 
 
 r /vvui,,,/ a greater confusion and discordance of materials at this 
 
 I* CONFUSION 
 
 OF HISTORIC than at any preceding epoch ; for at this time we have 
 MATERIALS, jjg^jjgj. a g re at empire, like the Grecian, the Persian, or 
 the Roman ; nor any great simultaneous movement, like the mighty 
 tide of the barbarian invasions, to serve as the starting and the re- 
 turning point for our researches, and to give, by its prominence, a 
 sort of unity to coteniporaneous history ; but on every side we see 
 States falling into dissolution ; the masses breaking into fragments ; 
 dukes, counts, and lords, renouncing their allegiance to kings and 
 emperors ; cities, towns, and castles, declaring their independence , 
 and, amid a general dissolution of the bonds of society, we find 
 almost universal anarchy prevailing. 
 
 2. In the East, the empire of the caliphs, the mighty colossus of 
 Mussulman dominion, was broken ; the Saracens were no longer ob- 
 
 H THK J ects ^ terror to a ^ their neighbors, and the frequent 
 SARACEN revolutions of the throne of Bagdad, 1 the central seat 
 WORLD. Q |j ^ e re iigj on O f the prophet, had ceased to have any 
 
 1. Bagdad, a famous city of Asiatic Turkey, long the chief seat of Moslem power in Asia, 
 the capital of the Eastern caliphate, and of the scientific world during the " Dark Ages," is 
 ituaUif on the river Tigris, sixty-eight miles north of the ruins of Babylon. 
 
 HagUd was founded by "the cliph Al-Mansour, A. D. 763, and is said to have been prinei-
 
 CHAP IL] MIDDLE AGES. 267 
 
 influence on the rest of the world. About the middle of the eightb 
 century, the Moors of Spain had separated themselves from their 
 Eastern brethren, and made Cor'dova 1 the seat of their dominion; 
 and little more than two centuries and a half later, (A. P. 1031) 
 the division of the Western Caliphate into a great number of small 
 principalities, which were weakened by civil dissensions, contributed 
 to the enlargement of the Christian kingdoms in the northern part 
 of the peninsula. Soon after the defection of the Moors of Spain, 
 an independent Saracen monarchy had arisen in Africa proper : this 
 was followed by the establishment of new dynasties in Egypt, 
 Khorassan', 4 and Persia ; and eventually, in the tenth century, we 
 find the Caliphate divided into a great number of petty States, whose 
 annals, gathered from oriental writers, furnish, amid a labyrinth of 
 almost unknown names and countries, little more than the chronology 
 of princes, with the civil wars, parricides, and fratricides of each 
 reign. Such was the condition of that vast population, comprising 
 many nations and languages, which still adhered, although under dif- 
 ferent forms, and with many departures from the originals, to the 
 general principles of the moslern faith. 
 
 3. The Byzantine empire still continued to exist, but in weakness 
 and corruption. " From the age of Justin' ian," says Gibbon, " it 
 
 pally formed out of the ruins of Ctes' iphon. It was greatly enlarged and adorned by the 
 grandson of its founder, the famous Haroun-al-Raschid. It continued to nourish, and to b 
 the principal seat of learning and the arts till 1258, when Hoolaku, grandson of Gengis Khan, 
 reduced the city after a siege of two months, and gave it up to plunder and massacre. It ia 
 said that the number of the slain in the city alone amounted to eight hundred thousand. Sincr 
 that event Bagdad has witnessed various other sieges and revolutions. It was burnt and 
 plundered by the ferocious Timour A. D. 1401, who erected a pyramid of human heads on its 
 ruin's. In 1637 it incurred the vengeance of Amurath IV., the Turkish sultan, who barbarously 
 massacred a large portion of the inhabitant*. Since that period the once illustrious city, now 
 numbering less than a hundred thousand inhabitants, has been degraded to the seat of a Turk 
 ish pashalic. The rich merchants and the beautiful princesses of the Arabian Tales have all 
 disappeared ; but it retains the tomb of the charming Zobeide, the most beloved of the wives 
 of Haroun-al-Raschid, and can still boast of its numerous gardens and well stocked bazaars. 
 
 1. Cor' dova, a city of Andalusia in Spain, is situated on the Guadalquiver, one hundred and 
 eighty-five miles south-west from Madrid. It is supposed to have been founded by the Ro- 
 mans, under whom it attained to great distinction as a rich and populous city, and a seat of 
 learning. In 572 it was taken by the Goths, and in 711 by the Moors, under whom it after- 
 wards became the splendid capital of the " Caliphate of the West ;" but with the extinction 
 of the Western caliphate, A. D. 1031, the power and the glory of Cor' dova passed away. 
 Cor' dova continued to be a separate Moorish kingdom until the year A. D. 1236, when it was 
 taken and almost wholly destroyed by the impolitic zeal of Ferdinand III. of Castile. It has 
 never since recovered its previous prosperity; and its population has diminished since the lltb 
 century, from five hundred thousand to less than forty thousand. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. Khorassan', (the " region of the sun,") is a province of Modern Persia, at the south-eastern 
 extremity of the Caspian Sea, inhabited by Persians proper, Turkmans , and Kurds. The re- 
 ligion is still Moham' medau.
 
 268 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 was sinking below its former level : the powers of destruction were 
 more active than those of improvement ; and the calaui- 
 
 III. THE . . A 
 
 BYZANTINE ities of war were imbittered by the more permanent 
 
 EMPIRE. ey -j a C ' V Q an( j ecclesiastical tyranny. " a It was daily 
 becoming more and more separated from Western Europe ; its re- 
 lations, both of peace arid war, being chiefly with the Saracens, who, 
 in the period of their conquests, overran all Asia Minor, and were 
 forming permanent establishments within sight of Constantinople. 
 Toward the close of the tenth century, however, a brief display of 
 vigor in the Byzantine princes, Niceph' orus, Zimisus, and Basil II., 
 repelled the Saracens, and extended the Asiatic boundaries of the 
 empire as far south as Antioch, and eastward to the eastern limits 
 of Armenia; but twenty -five years after the death of Basil (1025) 
 his effeminate successors were suddenly assaulted by the Turks or 
 Turcomans, a new race of Tartar barbarians of the Mussulman faith, 
 whose original seats were beyond the Caspian Sea, along the northern 
 boundaries of China. During the first invasion of the Turks, under 
 their leader Togrul, (1050) one hundred and thirty thousand 
 Christians were sacrificed to the religion of the prophet. His suc- 
 cessor, Alp Arslan, the " valiant lion," reduced Georgia 1 and Arme- 
 nia, and defeated and took captive the Byzantine emperor Rom anus 
 Diog' enes ; and succeeding princes of the Turkish throne gathered 
 the fruits of a lasting conquest of all the provinces beyond the Bos'- 
 porus and Hellespont. 
 
 4. Turning to the West, to examine the condition of the three 
 great divisions of the empire of the Carlovingians Italy, Germany, 
 and Gaul, we find there but the wrecks of former greatness. In 
 Italy, the dukes, the governors of provinces, and the leaders of 
 
 iv CONDI- arm ^ es were possessed of far greater power than the 
 
 TION OF reigning monarch. Having for a long period perpetu- 
 
 mLT - ated their dignities in their families, they had become 
 
 in fact petty tyrants over their limited domains ; ever jealous of the 
 
 royal authority, and dreading the loss of their privileges, they con- 
 
 I. Georgia is between the Caspian and the Black Sea, having Circassia on the north and Ar- 
 menia on the south. This country was annexed to the Roman empire by Pompey, in the year 
 to B. C. During the 6th and 7th centuries it was a theatre of contest between the Greek em- 
 pire and the Persians. In the 8th century a prince of the Jewish family of the Bagrat' ides es- 
 tablished there a monarchy which, with few interruptions, continued in his line down to the 
 commencement of the 19th century. In 1801 the emperor Paul of Russia declared himself, at 
 tt.e request of the Georgian pnnce, sovereign of Georgia. 
 
 a. Gibbon, IT. 4.
 
 CHAP. IL] MIDDLE AGES. 269 
 
 spired againist their sovereign as often as he showed an inclination to 
 rescue the people from the oppressive exactions of their masters. In 
 the early part of the tenth century they arose against Berenger, 
 duke of Friuli, 1 who had been proclaimed king, and offered the 
 crown to the prince of Bur' gundy, who during two years united the 
 government of Italy to that of Switzerland. 2 (923-925.) Soon 
 abandoning him, the turbulent nobles elevated to the throne Hugh, 
 count of Provence ;* and finally Italy, exhausted by the animositio. 8 , 
 and struggles of the aristocracy, made a voluntary surrender of the 
 kingdom to Otho the Great, the Saxon prince of Germany, who, in 
 the year 962, was crowned at Milan with the iron crown of Lom'- 
 bardy, and at Rome with the golden crown of the empire. 
 
 5. During several succeeding centuries the German emperors were 
 nominally recognized as sovereigns of the greater part of Italy ; but 
 as they seldom crossed the Alps, their authority was soon reduced 
 to a mere shadow The pretensions of the court of Rome were op- 
 posed to those of the German princes ; and during the quarrels that 
 arose between the Guelfs and Ghibellines, 4 the former the adherents 
 of Rome, and the latter of Germany Italy was thrown into the 
 greatest confusion. While some portions were under the immediate 
 jurisdiction of the German emperor, a large number of the dukes, 
 marquises, counts, and prelates, residing in their castles which they 
 
 1. Friuli is an Italian province at the head of the Adriat' ic, and at the north-eastern ex 
 tremity of Italy. 
 
 2. Switzerland, anciently called Helvetia, is an inland and mountainous country of Europe, 
 having the German States on the north and east, Italy on the south, and France on the west. 
 Julius Caesar reduced the Helvetians to submission 15 years B. C. ; after which the Romans 
 founded in it several flourishing cities, which were afterwards destroyed by the barbarians. In 
 the beginning of the 5th century the Burgun' dians overran the western part of Switzerland, 
 and fixed their seats around the lake of Geneva, and on the banks of the Rhone and the Saone. 
 Fifty years later the Aleman' ni overran the eastern part of Switzerland, and a great part of 
 Germany, overwhelming the monuments of Roman power, and blotting out the Christianity 
 which Rome had planted. At the close of the fifth century the Aleman' ni were overthrown 
 by Clovis ; the first Burgun' dian empire fell A. D. ">35 ; and for a long period afterward Hel- 
 vetia formed a part of the French monarchy. The partition of the dominions of Charlemagne 
 threw Switzerland into the German part of the empire. In the year 1307 the three forest 
 cantons, Uri, Schwytz, and Unterwalden, entered into a confederacy against the tyranny of the 
 Austrian house of Hapsburg, then at the head of the German empire. Other cantons from 
 time to time joined the league, or were conquered from Austria ; but it was not till the time 
 of Napoleon that all the present existing cantons were brought into the confederacy. (Maps 
 No. XIV. and XVII.) 
 
 3. Provence, see p. 271. 
 
 4. These party names, oi >scure in origin, were imported from Germany. In the wars of 
 Frederic Barbarossa, (the Redbeard,) the Guelfs were the champions of liberty: in the 
 crusades which the popes directed against that prince's unfortunate descendants they were 
 merely the partisans of the Church. The name soon ceased to signify principles, and merely 
 ien cd the same purpe as a watchword, or the color of a standard.
 
 270 MODERN HISTORY. [PAM 1L 
 
 had strongly fortified against the depredating inroads of the Normana, 
 Saracens, and Hungarians, exercised an almost independent authority 
 within their limited domains ; while a number of petty republics, the 
 most important of which were Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, fortifying 
 their cities, and electing their own magistrates, set the authority of 
 the pope, the nobles, and the emperor, equally at defiance. Such 
 was the confused state of Italy in the central period of the Middle 
 Ages. 
 
 G. Germany, at the beginning of the tenth century, under the rule 
 .of a minor, Louis IV., the last of the Carlovingian famity, was har- 
 CON assed by frequent invasions of the Hungarians ; while 
 DITION OF the six dukedoms into which the country was divided, 
 GEEMANY. viz . ga^^i Thurin' gia,' Franconia, 3 Bavaria, 4 Suabia, 6 
 and Lorraine, 8 appeared like so many distinct nations, ready to de- 
 clare war against each other. The dukes, originally regarded as 
 ministers and representatives of their king, had long been encroach- 
 ing on the royal prerogatives, and by degrees had arrogated to them- 
 selves such an increase of power, that the dignities temporarily con- 
 ferred upon them became hereditary in their families. They next 
 seized the royal revenues, and made themselves masters of the people 
 
 1. Saxony, the most powerful of the ancient duchies of Germany, embraced, at the period 
 of it* greatest development, the whole extent of northern Germany between the mouths of the 
 Rhino and the Oder. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Thurin' gia was in the central part of Germany, west of Prussian Saxony. In the 13th 
 century it was subdivided among many petty princes, and incorporated with other States, after 
 which the name fell gradually into disuse. It is still preserved, in a limited sense, in the 
 Thurin' trian forest, a hilly and woody tract in the interior of Germany, on the northern con- 
 fines of Bavaria. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. Frandnia was situated on both sides of the river Maine, and is now included mostly 
 within the limits of Bavaria. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 4. Bavaria comprising most of the Vindelicia and Nor' icum of the Romans, is a country 
 In the southern part of Germany. It was anciently a duchy afterwards an electorate ;vnd has 
 now the rank of a kingdom. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 . 5. Suabia, of which Ulm was the capital, was in the south-western part of Germany, west 
 of Bavaria, nnd north of Switzerland. It is now included in Baden, Wurtemburg, and Bavaria. 
 (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 6. 1-orraine, (German Lotharingia,) so called from Lothaire II., to whom this part of the 
 country fell in the division of the empire between him and his brothers Louis II. and Charles, 
 in the year 854, eleven years after the treaty of Verdun, (see p. 260,) was divided into Upper 
 and Lower Lorraine, and extended from the confines of Switzerland, westward of the Rhine, 
 to its mouths, and the mouths of the Scheldt. (Skelt.) A part of the Lower Lorraine was af- 
 terwards embraced in the French province of Lorraine, (see Map No. XIII.,) and is now com- 
 prised in the departments of the Meuse, the Vosges, the Moselle, and the Meurthe. Lorraine 
 was for centuries a subject of dispute between France and Germany. 
 
 The relative position of the six German dukedoms was therefore as follows: Saxony occu- 
 pied the northern f irtions of Germany ; Thurin' gia and Franconia the centre ; Bavaria the 
 couth-eastern ; Suabia the south-western ; and Lorraine the north-western. (Maps No. XIII. 
 and XVII.) '
 
 CHAP. II.] MIDDLE AGES. 271 
 
 and their hnds. On the death of Louis IV., (A. D. 911,) they set 
 aside the legitimate claimant, and elected for their sovereign one of 
 their own number, Conrad, duke of Franconia. His reign of seven 
 years was passed almost wholly in the field, checking the incursions 
 of the Hungarians, or quelling the insurrections of the other duke- 
 doms against his authority. On his death (A. D. 918), Henry I., 
 surnamed the Fowler, duke of Saxony, was elected to the throne, 
 which his family retained little more than a century. (Until 1024.) 
 The Saxon rulers of Germany, however, were not, like Charlemagne, 
 the sovereigns of a vast empire ; but rather the chiefs of a confeder- 
 acy of princes, reckoned of superior authority in matters of national 
 concern, while the nobles still managed their provincial administra- 
 tion mostly in their own way. The history of the little more than 
 nominal sovereigns of Germany, therefore, during 'this period, con- 
 tains but little of the history of the German people. 
 
 7. In France, the royal authority, at the beginning of the tenth 
 century, exercised an influence still more feeble than in 
 Germany, and was little more than an empty honor. DITION OF 
 Charles the Simple, whose name bespeaks his character, rRAI * CE - 
 was the nominal sovereign ; but four other princes in Gaul, besides 
 himself, bore the title of king, those of Lorraine, Transjurane- 
 Bi'irgundy, 1 Provence, 2 and Brittany; 3 while in other parts of the 
 country, powerful dukes and counts governed their dominions with 
 absolute independence. At length, in the year 920, an assembly of 
 nobles formally deposed Charles, but he continued his nominal reign 
 nearly three years longer, while the people and the nobility were 
 scarcely conscious of his existence. 
 
 1. Transsjiirane-Bur' g-undy, is that portion of Bur' gundy that was embraced in Switzerland 
 boyond the Jaro, or western Alps. 
 
 2. Provence was in the south-eastern part of France, on the Mediterranean, bounded on the 
 east by Italy, north by Daupliiny, and west by Langedoc. Greek colonies were founded here 
 at an early period, (see Marseilles, p. 157,) and the Romans, having conquered the country, 
 (I?. C. 124,) gave it the name of Provincin, (the province,) whence its later name was derived. 
 After the three-fold division of the empire of Louis le Debounaire, the son and successor of 
 Charlemagne, by the treaty of Verdun in 843, (see p. 2GO,) Provence fell to Lothaire ; but it 
 afterwards became a separate kingdom, under the name of the kingdom of Aries. In 1246 it 
 passed to the house of Anjou by marriage ; and in 1481 Louis XI. united it to the dominions 
 of the French crown. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 3. Brittany, or Bretagne, was one of the largest provinces of France, occupying the penin- 
 sula at the north-western extremity of the kingdom, and joined on the east by Poitou, Anjou, 
 Maine, and Normandy. It now forms the five departments, Finisterre, Cotes du Nord, (coat- 
 doo-uor) Morbihan, Ille and Vilaine, and Lower Loire. Brittany is supposed to have derived 
 its name from the Britons, who, expelled from England by the Anglo Saxons, took refuge 
 hero in the fifth century. It formed one of the duchies of France till it wa- united to the 
 crow i by Francis I. in 1532. (Map No. XIII.)
 
 272 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET IL 
 
 8. The only really important event of French history during tho 
 tenth century was the final settlement of the Northmen in that part 
 of Neustria, 1 which received from them the name of Normandy. 9 
 In the year 911, during the reign of Charles the Simple, the Norman 
 chief Hollo, who had made himself the terror of the West, ascended 
 the Seine with a formidable fleet, and laid siege to Paris. After the 
 purchase of a brief truce, Charles made him the tempting offer, to 
 cede to him a vast province of France, in which he might establish 
 himself on condition that he would abstain from ravaging the rest of 
 the kingdom, acknowledge the sovereignty of the crown of France, 
 and, together with his followers, make a public profession of Christi- 
 anity. The terms were accepted : a region that had been completely 
 laid waste by the ravages of the Normans was now assigned to them 
 for an inheritance ; and these ruthless warriors, abandoning a life of 
 pillage and robbery, were soon converted, by the wise regulations of 
 their chiefs, into peaceful tillers of the soil, and the best and bravest 
 of the citizens of France. This remarkable event put an end to the 
 war of Norman devastation, which, during a whole century, had de- 
 populated western Germany, Gaul, and England. 
 
 9. Of the independent aristocracy of France, after the death of 
 Charles the Simple, the most powerful were the counts of Paris, who, 
 during the last few reigns of the Carlovingian princes, exercised 
 little less than regal authority. At length, in the year 987, on the 
 death of Louis V., the fifth monarch after Charles the Simple, Hugh 
 Capet, count of Paris, was proclaimed king by his assembled vassals, 
 and anointed and crowned in the cathedral of Rheims, 3 by the arch- 
 bishop of that city. The rest of France took no part in this election ; 
 and several provinces refused to acknowledge the successors of Hugh 
 Capet, for three or four generations. The aristocracy still nionopo- 
 
 1. Neustria,. On the death of Clovis A. D. 511, (see p. 255,) his four sons divided the Mero- 
 vingian kingdom, embracing northern Gaul and Germany, into two parts, calling the eastern 
 Jlustrasia, and the western Neustria, the latter term being derived from the negative particle 
 ne "not," and .Austria : Jlustrasia, meaningthe Eastern, and Neustria the Western monarchy. 
 Neustria embraced that portion of modern France north of the Loire and west of the Meuse. 
 (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. Normandy was an ancient province of France, adjoining Brittany on the north-east. 
 (See Map No. XIII.) It became annexed to England through the accession of W illiam, duke 
 of Normandy, to the English throne, A. D. 1066. (See p. 290.) Philip Augustus wrested it from 
 John, and united it to France, in 1203. 
 
 3. Rhcims, a city of France ninety-five miles north-east from Paris, was a place of consider- 
 able importance under the Romans, who called it Durocortamn. It become a bishopric 
 before the irruption of the Franks, and received many privileges ft >m ihe Merovingian kings. 
 Map No. XIII.)
 
 CHAP. II.] MIDDLE AGES. 273 
 
 lized all the prerogatives of royalty ; and the power of the n >blea 
 alone flourished or subsisted in the State. The period of two hun- 
 dred and forty years, from the accession of Hugh Capet to that of 
 Louis IX., or Saint Louis, is described by Sismondi as " a long in- 
 terregnum, during which the authority of king was extinct, although 
 the name continued to exist." 
 
 II. THE FEUDAL SYSTEM, CHIVALRY, AND THE CRUSADES. 1. A 
 glance at the state of Southern and Western Europe in the central 
 period of the Middle Ages will show that, with the waning power, 
 and final overthrow, of the Carlovingian dynasty, a new order of 
 things had arisen ; that kingdoms were broken into as many separate 
 principalities as they contained powerful counts or barons ; that 
 regularly-constituted authority no longer existed ; and that a numer- 
 ous class of nobles, superior to all restraint, and involved in petty 
 feuds with each other, oppressed their fellow subjects, and humbled 
 or insulted their sovereigns, to whom they tendered an allegiance 
 merely nominal. The rude beginnings of this state of society may 
 be traced back to the germinating of the first seeds of order after 
 the spread of barbarism over the Roman world ; its growth was 
 checked under the first Carlovingians, who reduced the nobles to the 
 lowest degradation ; but with the decline of royal authority in 
 France, Germany, and Italy, it started into new life and vigor, and, 
 towards the end of the tenth century, became organized under the 
 name of the Feudal System. It maintained itself until r THE 
 about the end of the thirteenth century ; and during the FEUDAL 
 period of its existence is the prominent object that en- 
 gages the attention of the historian of the Middle Ages. The unity 
 of this portion of history will best be preserved by a brief historical 
 outline of the system itself, and of the relations and " events that 
 grew out of it. 
 
 2. The people who overturned the empire of the Romans, made a 
 partition of the conquered lauds between themselves and the original 
 possessors ; but in what manner or by what principles the division 
 was made cannot now be determined with certainty; nor can the 
 exact condition in which the Roman provincials were left be ascer- 
 tained, as the records of none of the barbarous nations of Europe 
 extend back to this remote period. It is, however, evident that the 
 chiefs, or leaders of the conquering invaders, in order to maintain 
 their acquisitions, annexed, to the apportionment of lands among 
 M* 18
 
 374 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II 
 
 their followers, the condition that every freeman who received a share 
 should appear in arms, when called upon, against the enemies of tho 
 community ; andmilitary service was probably at first the only con- 
 dition of the allotment. The immediate grantees of lands from the 
 leading chief, or king, were probably the most noted warriors who 
 served under him ; and these divided their ample estates among their 
 more immediate followers or dependents, to be held of themselves 
 by a similar tenure ; so that the system extended, through several 
 gradations, from the monarchs down through all the subordinates in 
 authority. Each was bound to resort to the standard of his imme- 
 diate grantor, and thence to that of his sovereign, with a band of 
 armed followers proportioned, in numbers, to the extent of the terri- 
 tory which he had received. 
 
 3. The primary division of lands among the conquerors, was 
 probably allodial ; that is, they were to descend by inheritance from 
 father to son ; but in addition to the lands thus distributed among 
 the nation, others were reserved to the crown for its support and dig- 
 nity; and the greater portion of the latter, frequently extending to en- 
 tire counties and dukedoms, were granted out, sometimes as hereditary 
 estates, sometimes for life, sometimes for a term of years, and on various 
 conditions, to favored subjects, and especially to the provincial gov- 
 ernors, who made under-grants of them to their vassals or tenants. 
 On the failure of the tenant to perform the stipulated conditions, 
 whether of military service, or of certain rents and payments, the 
 lands reverted to the grantors; and as the word feud signifies "an 
 estate in trust," hence the propriety of calling this the feudal 
 System. 
 
 4. In a very imperfect state this system existed in France in the 
 time of Charlemagne ; but that monarch, jealous of the ascendancy 
 which the nobles had already acquired, checked it by every means in 
 his power, by suffering many of the larger grants of dukedoms, 
 counties, &c., to expire without renewal, by removing the adminis 
 tration of justice from the hands of local officers into t^e hands of 
 his own itinerant judges, by elevating the ecclesiastical authority 
 as a counterpoise to that of the nobility, and by the creation of 
 a standing army, which left the monarch in a measure independent 
 of the military support of the great landholders. Thus the nobles, 
 desisting from the use of arms, and abandoning the task of defend- 
 ing the kingdom, soon became unable to defend themselves ; but 
 when in the ninth and tenth centuries the royal authority was entire-
 
 CHU-. II] MIDDLE AGES. 275 
 
 ly prostrated, when the provinces were subject to frequent inroads 
 of the Normans and Hungarians, and government ceased to afford 
 protection to any class of society, the proprietors of large estates 
 found in their wealth a means of defence and security not within the 
 reach of the great mass of the people. They converted their places 
 of abode into impregnable castles, and covered their persons with 
 knightly armor, jointed so as to allow a free movement of every part 
 of the body ; and this protection, added to the increased physical 
 strength acquired by constant military exercises, gave them an im- 
 portance in war over hundreds of the plebeians by whom they were 
 surrounded. In the confusion of the times, the governors of prov- 
 inces, under the various titles of dukes, counts, and barons, usurped 
 their governments as little sovereignties, and transmitted them by in- 
 heritance, subject only to the feudal superiority of the king. 
 
 5. Meanwhile the small allodial proprietors, or holders of lands in 
 their own right, exposed to the depredating inroads of barbarians, 
 or, more frequently, to the rapacity of the petty feudal lords, sunk 
 into a condition much worse than that of the feudal tenantry. Ex- 
 posed to a system of general rapine, without law to redress their in- 
 juries, and without the royal power to support their rights, they saw 
 no safety but in making a compromise with oppression, and were re- 
 duced to the necessity of subjecting themselves, in return for pro- 
 tection, to the feudal lords of the country. During the tenth and 
 eleventh centuries a large proportion of the allodial lands in France, 
 Germany, and Italy, were surrendered by their owners, and received 
 back again upon feudal tenures ; and it appears that the few who re- 
 tained their lands in their own right universally attached themselves 
 to some lord, although in these cases it was the privilege of the fracv 
 men to choose their own superiors. 
 
 6. Such was the state of the great mass of European society when 
 the feuda". system had reached its maturity, in the tenth and eleventh 
 centuries. Among the legal incidents and results that grew out of 
 the feudal relation of service on the one side and protection on the 
 other, were those of reliefs, or money paid to the lord by each vassal 
 on taking a fief, or feudal estate, by inheritance ; fines, on a change 
 of tenancy ; escheats, or forfeiture of the estate to the lord on ac- 
 count of the vassals delinquency, or for want of heirs ; aids, or sums 
 of money exacted by the lord on various occasions, such as the 
 knighting of his eldest son, the marriage of his eldest daughter, or 
 for the redemption of his person from prison ; wardship, or the
 
 276 MODERN HISTORY. [PABT IL 
 
 privilege of guardianship of the tenant by the lord during the mi- 
 nority of the former, with the use of the profits of his estate ; mar- 
 riage, or the right of a lord to tender a husband to his female wards 
 while under age, or to demand the forfeiture of the value of the 
 marriage. These feudal servitudes, which were unknown in the time 
 of Charlemagne, distinguish the maturity of the system, and show 
 the gradual encroachments of the strong upon the weak. 
 
 7. The feudal government, in its best state, was a system of op- 
 pression, which destroyed all feelings of brotherhood and equality 
 between man and man : it was admirably calculated, when the nobles 
 were united, for defence against the assaults of any foreign power ; 
 but it possessed the feeblest bonds of political union, and contained 
 innumerable sources of anarchy, in the interminable feuds of rival 
 chieftains. It exerted a fatal influence on the character of society 
 in general ; while individual man, in the person of the lord or baron, 
 was doubtless improved by it ; and the great mass of the population 
 of Europe, during the three or four centuries in which it was under 
 the thraldom of this system, was sunk in the most profound igno- 
 rance. Literature and science, confined almost wholly to the cloister, 
 could receive no favor in the midst of turbulence, oppression, and 
 rapine : judges and kings often could not write their own names : 
 many of the clergy did not understand the liturgy which they daily 
 recited : the Christianity of the times, " a dim taper which had need 
 of snuffing," degenerated into an illiberal superstition ; and every- 
 thing combined to fix upon this period the distinctive epithet of the 
 DARK AGES. Still the sentiment of independence the pride and 
 consciousness of power and the feelings of personal consequence 
 and dignity with which the feudal state of society inspired the nobles, 
 contributed to let in those first rays of light and order which dis- 
 pelled barbarism and anarchy, and introduced the virtues of a better 
 age. 
 
 S. In the midst of confusion and crime, while property was held 
 by the sword, and cruelty and iniustive reigned supreme, 
 
 11 CHIVALRY. / J J 
 
 the spirit of chivalry arose to turn back the tide of op- 
 pression, and to plant, in the very midst of barbarism, the seeds of 
 the most noble and the most generous principles. The precise time 
 at which chivalry was recognized as a military institution, with out- 
 ward forms and ceremonials, cannot now be ascertained; but the 
 first notices we have of it trace it to that age when the disorders in 
 the feudal system had attained their utmost point of excess, towards
 
 CHAP. IL] MIDDLE AGES. 277 
 
 the close of the tenth century. It was then that some noble barons, 
 filled with charitable zeal and religious enthusiasm, and moved with 
 compassion for the wretchedness which they saw around them, com- 
 bined together, under the solemnity of religious sanctions, with the 
 holy purpose of protecting the weak from the oppression of the pow 
 erful, and of defending the right cause against the wrong. 
 
 9. The spirit and the institution of chivalry spread rapidly ; 
 treachery and hypocrisy became detestable ; while courtesy, magna- 
 nimity, courage, and hospitality, became the virtues of the age ; and 
 the knights, who were ever ready to draw their swords, at whatever 
 odds, in defence of innocence, received the adoration of the populace, 
 and, in public opinion, were exalted even above kings themselves. 
 The meed of praise and esteem gave fresh vigor and purity to the 
 cause of chivalry ; and under the influence of its spirit great deeds 
 were done by the fraternity of valiant knights who had enrolled 
 themselves as its champions. " The baron forsook his castle, and 
 the peasant his hut, to maintain the honor of a family, or preserve 
 the sacredness of a vow : it was this sentiment which made the poor 
 serf patient in his toils, and serene in his sorrows : it enabled hit, 
 master to brave all physical evils, and enjoy a sort of spiritual ro 
 mance : it bound the peasant to his master, and the master to his. 
 king ; and it was the principle of chivalry, above all others, that was 
 needed to counteract the miseries of an infant state of civilization. " a 
 
 10. Though in the practical exemplifications of chivalry there was 
 often much of error, yet its spirit was based upon the most generous 
 impulses of human nature. " To speak the truth, to succor the 
 helpless and oppressed, and never to turn back from an enemy," was 
 the first vow of the aspirant to the honors of chivalry. In an age 
 of darkness and degradation, chivalry developed the character of 
 woman, &nd, causing her virtues to be appreciated and honored, made 
 her the equal companion of man, and the object of his devotion 
 " The love of God and the ladies," says Hallam, " was enjoined as a 
 single duty. He who was faithful and true to his mistress, was held 
 sure of salvation in the theology of castles, though not of cloisters. " b 
 In the language of another modern writer, " chivalry gave purity to 
 enthusiasm, crushed barbarous selfishness, taught the heart to ex- 
 pand like a flower to the sunshine, beautified glory with generosity, 
 and smoothed even the rugged brow of war." c A description of the 
 
 a. Introduction to Froissart's Chronicles. b. Hallam's Middle Ages, p. 512 
 
 c. James's Chrivalry and the Crusades, p. 31.
 
 278 MODERN HISTORY. [PABT IL 
 
 various < ustoms and peculiarities of chivalry, as they grew up by de 
 grees into a regular institution, would be requisite to a full develop 
 inent of the character of the age, but we can only glance at these 
 topics here. As chivalry was a military institution, its members 
 were taken wholly from the military class, which comprised none but 
 the descendants of the northern conquerors of the soil ; for, with few 
 exceptions, the original inhabitants of the western Roman empire 
 had been reduced to the condition of serfs, or vassals, of their bar- 
 barian lords. 
 
 11. The initiation of the German youth to the profession of arms 
 had been, from the earliest ages, an occasion of solemnity ; and when 
 the spirit of chivalry had established the order of knighthood, as 
 the concentration of all that was noble and valiant in a warlike age, 
 it became the highest object of every young man's ambition one day 
 to be a knight. A long and tedious education, consisting of instruc- 
 tion in all manly and military exercises, and in the first principles of 
 religion, honor and courtesy, was requisite as a preparation for this 
 honor. Next, the candidate for knighthood, after undergoing his 
 preparatory fasts and vigils, passed through the ceremonies which 
 made him a knight. Armed and caparisoned he then sallied forth 
 in quest of adventure, displayed his powers at tournaments, and 
 often visited foreign countries, both for the purpose of jousting with 
 other knights, and for instruction in every sort of chivalrous knowl- 
 edge. It cannot be denied, however, that the practice of knight- 
 errantry, or that of wandering about armed, as the avowed cham- 
 pions of the right cause against the wrong, gave to the evil-minded 
 a very convenient cloak for the basest purposes, and that every ad. 
 venture, whether just or not in its purpose, was too liable to be es- 
 teemed honorable in proportion as it was perilous. But these were 
 abuses of chivalry, and perversions of its early spirit. 
 
 12. During the eleventh century we find that chivalry, although 
 probably first appearing in Gaul, had spread to all the surrounding 
 nations. In Spain, the wars between the Christians and the Moors 
 exhibited a chivalric spirit unknown to former times : about this 
 period the institution of knighthood appears to have been introduced 
 among the Saxons of England ; and it was first made known to the 
 Italians, in the beginning of the eleventh century, by a band of 
 knights from Normandy, whose religious zeal prompted them, as 
 they wire returning from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, to under 
 take the relief of a small town besieged by the Saracens. As tho
 
 <CHAP. II] MIDDLE AGES. 279 
 
 feudal system spread over Europe, chivalry followed in its path. Its 
 spirit, combined with religious enthusiasm, led to the crusades ; and 
 it was during the progress of those holy wars, which we now proceed 
 to describe, that it attained its chief power and influence. 
 
 13. Pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and other hallowed localities in 
 Palestine, had been common in the early ages of the church ; and 
 towards the close of the tenth century they had increased r 
 
 to a perfect inundation, in consequence of the terror that OF THE 
 arose from the almost universal expectation then enter- CRUSADES - 
 tained, of the approaching end of the world. 3 - The idea originated 
 in the interpretation given to the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse, 
 where it was announced that, after the lapse of a thousand years, 
 Satan would be let loose to deceive the nations, and to gather them 
 together to battle against the holy city, but that, after a little season, 
 the army of the Deceiver should be destroyed by fire from heaven. 
 But the dreaded epoch, the year 1000, passed by; yet the current 
 of pilgrimage still continued to flow towards the East ; for fanati 
 cism had taken too strong hold of the minds of the people to be 
 easily diverted from its course. 
 
 14. After Palestine had fallen into the possession of the Turks, 
 about the middle of the seventh century, (see p. 249,) the pilgrims 
 to Jerusalem were subjected to every species of extortion and out- 
 rage from this wild race of Saracen conquerors ; and the returning 
 Christians spread through all the countries of Europe indignation 
 and horror by the pathetic tales which they related, of the injuries 
 and insults which they had suffered from the infidels. Among 
 others, Peter the Hermit, a native of Amiens, 1 returning from a pil- 
 grimage to Palestine, where he had spent much time in conferring 
 with the Christians about the means of their deliverance, complained 
 in loud terms of these grievances, and began to preach, in glowing 
 language, the duty of the Christian world to unite in expelling the 
 infidels from the patrimony of the Saviour. 
 
 15. The pope, Urban II., one of the most eloquent men of the 
 age, engaged zealously in the project, and at two general councils, 
 
 1. Amiens is a fortified city of Frame in the ancient province of Picardy, seventy-two miles 
 north from Paris. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 a. The archives of European countries contain a great number of charters of the tenth 
 century, beginning with these words: Jlppropinquantejine mundi, " As the end of tho world 
 tfi approaching." Sismondi's Roman Empire, ii. 250.
 
 280 MODERN HISTORY. 
 
 held at Placen' tia, 1 and Clermont, 2 and attended by a numer j& 
 
 train of bishops and ecclesiastics, and by thousands of the laity, the 
 
 multitude, harangued by the zealous enthusiasts of the cause, caught 
 
 the spirit of those who addressed them, and pledged themselves, and 
 
 all they possessed, to the crusade against the infidel possessors of the 
 
 Holy Land. The flame of enthusiasm spread so rapidly throughout 
 
 Christian Europe, that although the council of Clermont was held in 
 
 November of the year 1095, yet in the following spring large bands 
 
 iv THE ^ '^6 crusa ders, gathered chiefly from the refuse and 
 
 FIRST dregs of the people, and consisting of men, women, and 
 
 CRUSADE, children of all ages and professions and of many and 
 
 distinct languages, were in motion toward Palestine. 
 
 16. Walter the Penniless, leading the way, was followed by Peter 
 the Hermit ; but the ignorant hordes which they directed, marching 
 without order and discipline, and pillaging the countries which they 
 traversed, were nearly all cut off before they reached Constantinople ; 
 and the few who passed over into Asia Minor fell an easy prey to 
 the swords of the Turks. Immense bands that followed these hosts, 
 mingling the motives of plunder, licentiousness and vice, with a 
 foul spirit of fanatical cruelty, which proclaimed the duty of exter 
 minating all, whether Jews or Pagans, who rejected the Saviour, 
 were utterly destroyed by the enraged natives of southern Germany 
 and Hungary, through whose dominions they attempted to pass. The 
 loss of the crusaders in this first adventure is estimated at three 
 hundred thousand men. a But while these undisciplined and barba- 
 rous multitudes were hurrying to destruction, the flower of the chiv- 
 alry of Europe was collecting the genuine army of the crusade 
 under six as distinguished chiefs as knighthood could boast, headed 
 by Godfrey of Bouillon, 3 one of the most celebrated generals of the 
 age. In six separate bands they proceeded to Constantinople, some 
 
 1. Placen'tia, now Piazenza, was a city of northern Italy, near the junction of the Trebia 
 with the Po, thirty-seven miles south-east from Milan. When colonized by the Romans, 219 
 B. O,it was a strong and important city ; and it afforded them a secure retreat after the unfor- 
 tunate battles of Ticinus and Treb' bia. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Clermont, a city of France, in the ancient province of Auvergne, is eighty-two miles west 
 from Lyons, and two hundred and eight south from Paris. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 3. Bouillon was a small, woody, and mountainous district, nine miles wide and eighteen 
 long, now included in the duchy of Luxembourg, on the borders of France and Belgium. The 
 town of Bouillon is fifty-miles north-west from the city of Luxembourg. Bouillon, when in 
 the possession of Godfrey, was a dukedom. In order to supply himself with funds for his 
 expedition to the Holy Land, Godfrey, who was likewise duke of Lower Lorraine*, (note, 
 p. 270,) mortgaged Bouillon to the bishop. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 a, Gibbon, iv. 116125.
 
 ] MIDDLE AGES. 281 
 
 by way of Italj and the Adriat' ic, and others by way of the Danube ; 
 but their conduct, unlike that of the first crusaders, was in general 
 remarkable for its strict discipline, order, and moderation. 
 
 1 7. Alex' ius, the Greek emperor of Constantinople, had before 
 craved, in abject terms, assistance against the infidel Turks ; but 
 now, when the Turks, occupied with other interests, no longer men- 
 aced his frontier, his conduct changed, and alarmed by the vast 
 swarms of crusaders who crossed his dominions, he strove, by treach- 
 ery and dissimulation, and even by hostile annoyances, to diminish 
 their numbers, and thwart their designs, and to wring from their 
 chiefs acts of homage to his own person. With some of the chiefs, 
 the crafty Greek succeeded ; but others spurned his proposals with 
 indignation, and at the hazard of war resolved to maintain their in- 
 dependent position ; and when at length the 'several detachments of 
 the army of the crusaders passed ipto Asia, they left behind them 
 in their treacherous auxiliaries, the Christians of the Byzantine em- 
 pire, worse enemies than they had to encounter in the Turks. 
 
 18. It is said that after the crusaders had united their forces in 
 Asia Minor, and had been joined by the remains of the multitude that 
 had followed Peter the Hermit, the number of their fighting men, 
 without including those who did not carry arms, was six hundred 
 thousand, and that, of these, the number of knights alone was two 
 hundred thousand. 8 - At Nice, 1 in Bithyn' ia," the capital of the 
 Sultany of Houm, 3 they first encountered the Turks, and after a siege 
 of two months compelled the city to surrender, in spite of the efforts 
 of the Sultan, Soliman, for its relief. (A. D. 1097.) From Nice 
 they set out for Syria ; and after having gained a victory over Soli- 
 man near Dorilae' um, 4 in a march of five hundred miles they trav- 
 ersed Lesser Asia, through a wasted land and deserted towns, without 
 finding a friend or an enemy. 
 
 19. The siege of Antioch, unparalleled for its difficulties, and the 
 
 1. JVYce, called by the Romans Niece' a, was the capital of Bithyn' ia. The Turkish town of 
 isnik occupies the site of the Bithyn' ian city. (Map No. IV.) 
 
 2. Bithyn' ia was a country of Asia Minor, having the Euxine on the north, and the Propon- 
 tis and Mysia on the west. (Map No. IV.) 
 
 3. Roum (meaning the kingdom of the Romans), was the name given by Soliman, sultan of 
 the Turks, to the present Jfat6lia, (the western part of Asia Minor,) when he invaded and 
 became master of it in the llth century. 
 
 4. Dorilte' um was a city of Phrygia, on the confines of Bithyn' ia. The plain of Donlse' am 
 k often mentioned in history as the place where the armies of the Eastern empire assembled 
 in their wars against the Turks. (Map No. IV.) 
 
 a. James's History of the Crusades, p. 111.
 
 282 MODERN HISTORY. 
 
 losses on both sides, was the next obstacle to the onward march of 
 the crusaders, now reduced to half the number that had been collect- 
 ed at the capture of Nice ; but when the enterprise seemed hopeless, 
 the town was betrayed into their hands by a Syrian renegado, (June 
 1098.) A few days later, the victors themselves, suffering the ex* 
 tremity of privation and famine, were encompassed by a splendid 
 Turkish and Persian army of three hundred thousand men ; yet 
 the Christians, collecting the relics of their strength, and urged on 
 by a belief of miraculous interposition in their favor, sallied from 
 the town, and in a single memorable day annihilated or dispersed 
 the host of their enemies. 
 
 20. While the siege of Antioch was progressing, the Turkish princes 
 consumed their time and resources in civil wars beyond the Tigris ; 
 and the caliph of Egypt, embracing the opportunity of weakness and 
 discord to recover his ancient possessions, besieged and took Jerusa- 
 lem. The Egyptian monarch offered to join his arms to those of 
 the Christians, for the purpose of subduing all Palestine ; but it was 
 evident that he purposed to enjoy the fruits of victory without par- 
 ticipation ; and the answer of the crusading chiefs was firm and uni- 
 form : " the usurper of Jerusalem, of whatever nation, was their 
 enemy, and they would conquer the holy city with the sword of 
 Christ, and keep it with the same." 
 
 21. With an army reduced to less than fifty thousand armed men, 
 the crusaders, in the month of May, 1099, proceeded from Antioch 
 towards Jerusalem. Marching between Mount Lib' anus 1 and the 
 sea-shore, they obtained by treaty a free passage through the petty 
 Turkish principalities of Trip' oli," Sickm, Tyre, 3 Acre, 4 and Caesarea, 6 
 
 1. To the four chains of mountains running parallel to the sea-coast through northern Syria 
 or Palestine, the name Lib' anus has been applied. To a chain farther east the Greeks gave 
 the name Anti-Lib' anus. (Map No. VI.) 
 
 2. Trip' oli, at this day one of the neatest towns of Syria, is a seaport, seventy-five miles 
 north-west from Damascus. It was one of the most flourishing seats of ancient literature, and 
 contained an extensive library, numbering, it is said, one hundred thousand volumes, which 
 was destroyed by the crusaders in the year 1 108. On this occasion the crusaders displayed the 
 same fanatical zeal of which the Saracens have been accused, though some think unjustly., in 
 the case of the Alexandrian library. A priest having visited an apartment in the library in 
 which were several copies of the Koran, reported that it contained none but impious works of 
 Mahomet ; and the whole was forthwith committed to the flames. {Map No. VI.) 
 
 3. Tyre and Siiltm, see p. 61, and Map No. VI. 
 
 4. Acre is a town of Syria on the coast of the Mediterranean, at the north-eastern limit of 
 the bay of Acre. Mount Carmel terminates on the south-western side of the bay. This town is 
 rendered famous in modern history by its determined and successful resistance to the arms of 
 Napoleon in 1799. See p. 471. (Map No. VI.) 
 
 5. Casarea was an ancient Roman town on the sea-coast of Palestine, thirty miles south-west 
 from Acre. It was a nourishing city till A. D. 635, when it fell into the hands of the Saracene.
 
 CHAP. II] MIDDLE AGES. 283 
 
 which promised to remain, for the time, neutral, and to follow the 
 example of the capital. When at length the holy city broke upon 
 the view of the Christian host, a sudden enthusiasm of joy filled 
 every bosom ; past dangers, fatigues, and privations, were forgotten ; 
 the name Jerusalem was echoed by every tongue ; and while some 
 shouted to the sky, some knelt and prayed, some wept aloud, and 
 some cast themselves down and kissed the earth in silence. But to 
 the excess of rejoicing succeeded the extreme of wrath at seeing the 
 city in the hands of the infidels ; and in the first ebullition of rage, 
 a simultaneous attack was commenced on the town ; but a vigorous 
 repulse taught the necessity of more judicious methods of assault. 
 
 22. Passing over the details of the siege which followed, it is suf- 
 ficient to state, that, within forty days, Jerusalem was taken by a 
 desperate assault, and that the blood of seventy thousand Moslems 
 washed the pavements of the captured city ; for the soldiers of the 
 cross believed that they were doing God good service in exterminat- 
 ing the blasphemous strangers ; and that all mercy to the infidels 
 was an injury to religion. When the bloody strife was over, the 
 leaders and soldiers, washing the marks of gore from their persons, 
 and casting off their armor, in the guise of penitents and amid the 
 loud anthems of the clergy, ascended the Hill of Calvary 1 on their 
 knees, and proceeding to the holy sepulchre, with tears of joy kissed 
 the stone which had covered the Saviour, and then offered up their 
 prayers to the mild Teacher of that beautiful religion whose princi- 
 ples are " peace and good will to men." Peter the Hermit, whose 
 preaching had excited the crusade, had followed the army through 
 all its perils ; and when he entered the city with the conquerors, the 
 Christians of Jerusalem recognized the poor pilgrim who had first 
 spoken to them words of hope, and promised them deliverance from 
 the oppression of their Turkish masters. The reception which he 
 now met with from the enthusiastic multitude, who in the fervor of 
 their gratitude attributed all to him, and casting themselves at his 
 feet, invoked the blessings of heaven on their benefactor, more than 
 a thousand fold repaid the Hermit for all the anxiety, the toils, and 
 dangers, which he had endured. The ultimate fate of this extract 
 dinary individual is unknown. 
 
 to 1101 it fell into the hands of the crusaders, when it sunk to rise no more. Caesarea was tha 
 place where Peter converted Cornelius and his house, (Acta, x. 1,) and where Paul made his 
 memorable speeches to Felix and Agrippa. (Acts, xxiv., xxv , xxvi.) 
 1. Hill of Calvary. See description of Jerusalem p. 1(34, and Map No. VII.)
 
 284 MODERN HISTORY. [PART It 
 
 23. Jerusalem was now delivered from the hands of the iafidela: 
 the great object of the expedition was accomplished ; and the feudal 
 institutions of Europe were introduced into Palestine in all their 
 purity. Godfrey of Bouillon was chosen the first sovereign of Je- 
 rusalem ; and the Christian kingdom thus established continued to 
 exist nearly a century. Several minor States were established in 
 the East by the crusaders, but as they seldom united cordially for 
 mutual defence, and were continually assailed by powerful enemies, 
 none of them were of long duration. Even during the sovereignty 
 of Godfrey, the kingdom of Jerusalem, owing to the return of many 
 of the crusaders, and their losses in battle, was left for a time to bp 
 supported by an army of less than three thousand men. But the 
 spirit of pilgrimage was still rife ; and it is estimated that, between 
 the first and second crusade, five hundred thousand people set out from 
 Europe for Syria, in armed bands of several thousand men each ; and 
 although the greater portion of them perished by the way, the few who 
 reached their destination proved exceedingly serviceable in supporting 
 the Christian ause, and in re-peopleing the devastated lands of Pales- 
 tine. The period between the first and second crusade is remarkable 
 for the rise, at Jerusalem, of the two most distinguished orders of 
 knighthood the Hospitallers, and the Red-Cross Knights, or Temp- 
 lars. The valor of both orders became noted : the Hospitallers ever 
 burned a light during the night, that they might always be prepared 
 against the enemy ; and it is said that any Templar, on hearing the 
 cry " to arms," would have been ashamed to ask the number of the 
 enemy. The only question was, " where are they ?" 
 
 24. During nearly two centuries after the council of Clermont, 
 each returning year witnessed a new emigration of pilgrim warriors 
 for the defence of the Holy Land, although but six principal cru- 
 sades followed the first great movement ; and all these were excited 
 by some recent or impending calamity to Palestine. A detailed ac- 
 count of these several crusades would only exhibit the perpetual 
 recurrence of the same causes and effects ; and would appear but so 
 many faint and unsuccessful copies of the original. Avoiding detail, 
 we shall therefore speak of them only in general terms. 
 
 25. Forty-eight years after the conquest of Jerusalem, the losa 
 v THE ^ ^ e P rmc ip a l Christian fortresses in Palestine led to a 
 SECOND second crusade, which was undertaken by Conrad III., 
 
 CRUSADE. emperor O f Germany, and Louis VII., king of France 
 (A. D. 1147.) The Pope Eugenius abetted the design, and coin-
 
 CHAP. II. ] MIDDLE AGES. 285 
 
 missioned the eloquent St. Bernard to preach the cross through 
 France and Germany. A vast army under Conrad took the lead in 
 the expedition ; but not a tenth part ever reached the Syrian boun- 
 daries. The army of French and Germans was but little more for- 
 tunate ; and the poor remains of these mighty hosts, still led by the 
 emperors of France and Germany, after reaching Jerusalem, joined 
 the Christian arms in a fruitless siege of Damascus, which was the 
 termination of the second crusade. 
 
 26. Forty years after the second crusade, Jerusalem was taken by 
 Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt, whose authority was acknowledged 
 also by the greater part of Syria and Persia. (A. D. 1187.) The 
 loss of the holy city filled all Europe with consternation ; and new 
 expeditions were fitted out for its recovery. France, yi THE 
 Germany, and England, joined in the crusade ; and the THIRD 
 armies of each country were headed by their respective 
 sovereigns, Philip Augustus, Frederic Barbarossa, and Kichard I., 
 surnamed the lion-hearted. Frederic, after defeating the Saracens 
 in a pitched battle on the plains of Asia Minor, lost his life by im- 
 prudently bathing in the river Orontes ; a and his army was reduced 
 to a small body when it reached Antioch. The French and English, 
 more successful than the Germans, besieged and took Acre, after a 
 siege of twenty-two months (July, A. D. 1191); but as Richard 
 and Philip quarrelled, owing to the latter's jealousy of the superior 
 military prowess of the former, Philip returned home in disgust ; 
 and Richard, after defeating Saladiu in a great battle near Ascalon, 1 
 and penetrating within sight of Jerusalem, concluded a three years' 
 truce with his rival, and^then set sail for his own dominions. (A. D. 
 Oct. 1192.) 
 
 27. The fourth crusade b was undertaken at the beginning of the 
 thirteenth century, (A. I). 1202,) at the instigation of 
 
 pope Innocent III. No great sovereign joined in the FOURTH 
 enterprise ; but the most powerful barons of France CRUSADE - 
 
 1. Ascalon, a very ancient city of the Philistines, was a sea-port town of the Mediterranean, 
 forty-five miles south-west from Jerusalem. Its ruins present a strange mixture of Syrian, Greek, 
 Gothic, and Roman remains. There is not a single inhabitant within the old walls, which are 
 still standing. The prophecy of Zechariah, " Ascalon shall not be inhabited," aud that of 
 Ezekie!, "It shall be a desolation," are now actually fulfilled. (Map No. VI.) 
 
 a. Some authorities say the Cydnus. See James's Chivalry and the Crusades, p. 239. 
 
 b. Seva/d. incportant expeditions that were made to the Holy band a short time previous to 
 this, and that were promoted by the exhortations of pope Celestine III., are represented by 
 some writers as the fourth cnisade. In this way some writers enumerate nic I distinct crusades 
 some more, while others des ribe only six.
 
 286 MODERN HISTORY. [Pxax IL 
 
 took the cross, and gave the command to Boniface, marquis of 
 Montserrat. 1 They hired the Venetians to transport them to Pales- 
 tine, and agreed to recapture for them the city of Zara, 2 in Dalmatia ; 
 and this object was accomplished, while the pope in vain launched 
 the thunders of the church at the refractory crusaders. Instead of 
 sailing to Palestine, the expedition was then directed against the 
 Greek empire, under the pretence of dethroning a usurper ; ai;d the 
 result was the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins, and the 
 founding of a new Latin or Roman empire on the ruins of the By- 
 zantine. (A. D. April 1204.) The new empire existed during a 
 period of fifty-seven years, when the Greeks partially recovered their 
 authority. The fourth crusade ended without producing any benefit 
 to Palestine. 
 
 28. The fifth crusade, undertaken fourteen years after the fall of 
 vin THE *ke Byzantine empire, was at first conducted by Andrew, 
 
 FIFTH monarch of Hungary. The Christian army, after spend 
 CRUSADE. m g some t} me m th e vicinity of Acre, sailed to Egypt ; 
 but after some successes, among which was the taking of Damietta, 3 
 ultimate ruin was the issue of the expedition. A few years later, 
 (A. D. 1228), Frederic II., emperor of Germany, then arrayed in 
 open hostility with the pope, led a formidable army to Palestine, and 
 after he had advanced some distance from Acre towards Jerusalem, 
 concluded a treaty with the sultan Melek Kamel, whereby the holy 
 city and the greater part of Palestine were yielded to the Christians. 
 After the return of Frederic to Europe, new bands of crusaders pro- 
 ceeded to Palestine : the sultan Kamel retook Jerusalem, but the 
 Christians again obtained it by treaty. 
 
 29. While these events had been passing in Palestine a new dy- 
 nasty had arisen in the north of Asia, which for a time threatened 
 a complete revolution of all the known countries of the world. In 
 
 the early part of the thirteenth century Gengis Khan, 
 the son of a petty Mongol prince, had raised himself to 
 be the lord of all the pastoral nations throughout the 
 vast plains of Tartary. After desolating China, 4 and adding its five 
 
 1. Montserrat was an Italian marquisate in western Lombardy, now included in Piedmont. 
 The marquises of Montserrat, rising from small beginnings in the course of the tenth century, 
 and gradually extending* their territories, acted, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 
 one of the most brilliant parts alloted to any reigning house in Europe. 
 
 2. Zarn, still the capital of Dalmatia, is a seaport on the eastern coast of the Adriat' ic, one 
 hundred and fifty miles south-east from Venice. 
 
 3. Damietta is on the Damietta, or principal eastern branch of the Ni! e, si x miles from its mouth. 
 
 4. China, a vast country of eastern Asia, may be i Imost said to have no history of any in
 
 CHAP. II] MIDDLE AGES. 287 
 
 northern provinces to his empire, at the head of seven bundled thou- 
 sand warriors a he invaded and overran the dominions of the sultan 
 of Persia. His successor Octai directed his resistless arms west- 
 ward, under the conduct of his general Baton, who, in the course of 
 six years, led his warriors, in a conquering march, from east to west, 
 over a fourth part of the circumference of the globe. The inun- 
 dating torrent, passing north of the territories of the Byzantine em- 
 pire, left them unharmed ; but it rolled with all its fury upon the 
 more barbarous nations of Europe. A great part of Russia 1 was 
 desolated ; and both Kiev 2 and Moscow, 3 the ancient and modern 
 capital, were reduced to ashes : the Tartars penetrated into the heart 
 of Poland,* and as far as the borders of Germany, whence they 
 turned to the south and spread over the plains of Hungary. Already 
 the remote nations of the Baltic trembled at the approach of these 
 barbarian warriors ; and Germany, France, England, and Italy, were 
 on the point of arming in the common defence of Christendom, when 
 Baton and the five hundred thousand warriors who still accompanied 
 him were recalled to Asia by the death of their sovereign. (A. D. 
 1245.) 
 
 30. Among the many tribes and nations that had been driven from 
 their original seats by the great Tartar inundation, were the Coras- 
 mins, embracing numerous hordes of Tartar origin, that had attached 
 themselves to the fortunes of the sultan of Persia. They now pre- 
 cipitated themselves upon Syria and Palestine, and massacred indis- 
 
 terest to the general reader, it has so few revolutions or political changes to record. Tho 
 authentic history of the Chinese begins with the compilations of Confucius, who was born 
 B. C. 550. From that period the annals of the empire have been carefully noted and preserved 
 in ;in unbroken line to the present day forming a series of more than five hundred volumes 
 of uninteresting chronological details. 
 
 1. Russia, the largest, and one of the most powerful empires, either of ancient or modern 
 times, extends from Behring's straits and the Pacific on the east, to the Gulf of Bothnia on tho 
 west, a distance of nearly six thousand miles, with an average breadth of about fifteen hun- 
 dred miles. In this immense empire about forty distinct languages are in use, having attached 
 to them a great number of different dialects. In the year 1535 the extent of the Russian do- 
 iniuions was estimated at thirty-seven thousand German square miles; but in the year 1850 it 
 nad increased to ten times that amount. (For early history of Russia see p. 309.) 
 
 2. Kiev, or Kiow, the capital of the modern Russian province of the same name, is on the 
 Dnieper, two hundred and twenty miles north of Odes' sa, the nearest port on the Black Sea. 
 Kiev was the former residence of the grand dukes of Russia the earliest seat of the Christian 
 religion in Russia and for a considerable period the capital of the empire. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. Moscow, still one of the capitals of the Russian empire, and the grand entrepot of its in- 
 ternal commerce, is situated on the navigable river Moskwa, a branch o ' the Volga, four hun- 
 dred miles south-east from St. Petersburg. It was founded in the year 1 (47. (Map No. XII.) 
 
 4. Poland, see p. 311. 
 a. Gibbon, iv. 251.
 
 288 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 arimiuately Turks, Jews, and Christians who opposed them. Jeru- 
 salem was taken ; and it is said every soul in it was put to the sword ; 
 but at length the Turks and Christians, uniting their forces, utterly 
 defeated the Corasmins, and thus delivered Palestine from one of 
 the most terrible scourges that had ever been inflicted on it. 
 
 31. The ravages of the Corasmins in Palestine called forth 
 
 the sixth crusade, which was led by Louis IX., king 
 
 X, THK 
 
 SIXTH of France, commonly called St. Louis. He began by an 
 CRUSADE. a tt, ac k on Egypt ; but after some successes he was de- 
 feated, made prisoner when enfeebled by disease, and forced to 
 purchase his liberty by the payment of an immense ransom. (A. D. 
 1250.) Twenty years later St. Louis embarked on a second cru- 
 sade the last of those great movements for the redemption of the 
 Holy Land. The fleet of Louis being driven by a storm into Sar 
 dinia, here a change of plans took place, and it was resolved to at 
 tack the Moors of Africa. The French landed near Carthage, and 
 took the city ; but a pestilence soon carried off Louis and the greater 
 portion of his army, when the expedition was abandoned. 
 
 32. From this time the fate of the Eastern Christians grew daily 
 more certain ; and in the year 1291 a Turkish army of two hundred 
 thousand men appeared before the walls of Acre, the last strong- 
 hold of the crusaders in Palestine. After a tedious siege the city 
 was taken ; and thus the last vestige of the Christian power in Syria 
 was swept away. The crusades had occupied a period of nearly two 
 centuries, and had led two millions of Europeans to find their graves 
 in Eastern lands ; and yet none of the objects of these expeditions 
 had been accomplished ; a sad commentary upon the folly and fa- 
 naticism of the age. The effects of these holy wars upon the state 
 of European society will be referred to in a subsequent chapter. 51 
 
 III. ENGLISH HISTORY. 1. Our last reference to the history of 
 
 England was to that period rendered brilliant by the 
 
 AFPEE THE re ig n of Alfred the Great, the real founder of the Eng- 
 
 DEATH OF Hsh monarchy ; and we now proceed to give a brief but 
 
 connected outline of the continuation of English history 
 
 during the central period of the Middle Ages, which has just passed 
 
 in review before us. 
 
 2. After the death of Alfred, in the first year of the tenth cen- 
 tury, (A. D. 901,) England, still a prey to the ravages of the Danes, 
 
 ft. See Part III. ch. ix. *>f the University Edition.
 
 CHAP. IL] MIDDLE AGES. 289 
 
 and intestine disorder, relapsed into confusion and barbarism ; and 
 under a succession of eight sovereigns, 51 from the time of Alfred, its 
 history presents little that is important to the modern reader. 
 During the reign of Ethelred II., the last of these rulers, the 
 Danes and Norwegians, led by Sweyn king of Denmark, 1 acquired 
 possession of the greater portion of the kingdom ; and on several 
 occasions Ethelred purchased a momentary respite from their rav- 
 ages by large bribes, which only increased their avidity, and insured 
 their return. At length the weak and cruel monarch ordered the 
 massacre of all the Danes in the Saxon territories. (A. D. 1002.) 
 The execution of the barbarous mandate occasioned the renewal of 
 hostilities : the English nobles, in contempt of their sovereign, of- 
 fered the crown to Sweyn ; while Ethelred fled for refuge to the 
 court of Richard, duke of Normandy, whose sister he had married. 
 On the death of Sweyn, in the year 1014, the Danish army in Eng- 
 land chose his son Canute to succeed him ; while the Saxon chiefs, 
 with their wonted inconstancy, recalled Ethelred. On the death of 
 f,he latter, his son Edmund, surnamed Ironside, from his hardihood 
 and valor, was chosen king by the English ; but by his death, (A. D. 
 1016,) after a few months, Canute, in accordance with a previous 
 treaty, was left in undisturbed possession of the whole of England. 
 
 3. Canute, surnamed the Great, proved to be the most powerful 
 monarch of the age. By marrying Emma, the widow of Ethelred, 
 he conciliated the vanquished Britons, and disarmed the hostility of 
 the duke of Normandy ; while the earl of Godwin, the most power- 
 ful of the English barons, was gained to his interests, by receiving 
 the hand of the king's daughter. In the year 1025 he subdued 
 Sweden, and Norway 2 two years later, and oc his death (Nov. 1036) 
 he left his vast possessions of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Eng- 
 land, to be divided among his children. His administration of the 
 government of England was at first harsh ; but he gradually emerged 
 from his original barbarism, embraced Christianity, encouraged liter- 
 ature, and adopted some wise institutions for the benefit of his 
 Anglo Saxon subjects. 
 
 4. After the death of Canute, two of his sons, Harold and Hardi- 
 canute, reigned in succession over England; after which, in 1041, 
 
 1. Denmark, Sweden, and Norway ; see p. 308. 
 
 2. Sweden and Norway. See Denmark, p. 308. 
 
 a. Edward 1. the Elder, 901. Athelatan, 923. Edmund I n 941. Edred, 946. Kdwy, 9SS, 
 E-lgar, 959. Ed* ard II., the Martyr, 975. Ethelred II., 978
 
 290 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET II 
 
 the crown returned to the ancient Saxon family, in the person of 
 Edward the Confessor, a younger son of Ethelred. The mild char- 
 acter of Edward endeared him to his Saxon subjects, notwithstand- 
 ing the partiality which he showed to his Norman favorites ; but his 
 reign of twenty-five years was weak and inglorious, and it "was dis- 
 turbed by the rebellion of the earl of Godwin, by occasional hostili- 
 ties with the Welsh and Scotch, and by intrigues for the succession. 
 On his death, (1066,) Harold, son of Godwin, took possession of the 
 throne ; but scarcely had he overcome his brother Tostig, who dis- 
 puted the supremacy with him, when he found a more formidable 
 competitor in William, duke of Normandy, to whom the late king 
 had either bequeathed or purposed the succession. On the 25th of 
 September, 1066, Harold gained a great victory over his brother; 
 but, three days later, William landed in Sussex, 1 at the head of sixty 
 thousand men, and on the fourteenth of October fought 
 
 II. NORMAN 
 
 with Harold the bloody battle of Hastings, 2 which ter- 
 minated the Saxon dynasty, and put William the Nor- 
 mun in possession of the throne of England. Harold was tilled in 
 battle ; the English army was nearly destroyed, and a fourth part of 
 the Normans slam. The victory gave to William the title of the 
 Conqueror ; and the subjugation of the realm by him is termed, in 
 English history, the Norman conquest. 
 
 5. This conquest, however, was gradual, for the immediate results 
 of the battle of Hastings gave to William less than a fourth part of 
 the kingdom ; and his wars for the subjugation of the West, the 
 North, and the East, were protracted during a period of seven years. 
 William treated the English as rebels for appearing in the field 
 against him, and distributed their lands among his Norman followers. 
 To this distribution, the titles and revenues of many of the English 
 nobility owe their origin. a The northern Saxons made a vigorous 
 resistance, and William treated them with a severity in proportion 
 to the valor and pertinacity of their defence laying waste the 
 country with fire and sword, until, in some countries, the danger of 
 rebellion was removed by a total dearth of inhabitants. 
 
 'T is a southern county of England, on the English channel, west of Kent. 
 
 , 'listings, now a town of ten thousand inhabitants, is fifty-four miles south-east frcrn Jx>n- 
 don. It is pleasantly situated in a vale, surrounded on every side, except, toward the sea. by hilli 
 . and cliffs. On a hill east of the town are still to be seen banks and trenches, supposed to have 
 been the work of the Normans at the time of the invasion. (Map No. XVI.) 
 
 a. See Notes, Warwick, Richmond, fee., p. 306.
 
 CHAP. II. J MIDDLE AGES. 291 
 
 6. The foundations of the feudal system had existed in England 
 before the conquest ; but the distribution of the conquered lands 
 among the Norman followers of William, gave that prince the op- 
 portunity of fully establishing the system as it then existed, in its 
 maturity, on the continent. Preparatory to the introduction of the 
 feudal tenures, William caused a survey to be made of all the lands 
 in the kingdom, the particulars of which were inserted in what is 
 called the Doomsday Book, or Book of Judgment, which is still in 
 being. Under the iron rule of the conqueror the Anglo Saxons be- 
 came vassals of their Norman lords ; the name Saxon was made a 
 term of reproach ; and the Saxon language was regarded as barba 
 rous ; while the Norman-French idiom was employed in all the acts 
 of administration. 
 
 7. On the death of William, in the year 1087, his second son, 
 William Rufus, took possession of the throne, to the prejudice of his 
 elder brother Robert, then absent in Normandy. His reign, and 
 that of his brother and successor, Henry I., are distinguished by few 
 events of importance ; but both plundered the kingdom : an ancient 
 Saxon chronicle says that the former was " loathed by nearly all his 
 people, and odious to God ;" and of the latter it is said that "justice 
 was in his hands a source of revenue, and judicial murder a frequent 
 instrument of extortion." 
 
 8. Henry had married a Saxon princess ; and to his daughter Ma 
 tilda, by this marriage, he designed to leave the crown ; but his 
 nephew Stephen defeated his intentions by immediately seizing the 
 vacant throne on the death of Henry. (1135.) A long civil war 
 that followed was terminated by a general council of the kingdom 
 which adopted Henry Plantagenet, 1 Matilda's son, as the successor 
 of Stephen. One year later the boisterous life and wretched reign 
 of Stephen were brought to a close, when Henry II., the first of 
 the Plantagenet dynasty, ascended the throne of England. (A. D. 
 1154.) 
 
 9. By inheritance and marriage, Henry possessed, in addition to 
 the duchy of Normandy, the fairest provinces of north-western 
 
 1. Plantagenet is the surname of the kings of England from Henry II. to Richard IIJ. 
 inclusive. Antiquarians are much at a loss to account for the origin of this name ; and the 
 best derivation they can find for it is, that Fulk, the first earl of Anjou of that name, being 
 ttung with remorse for some wicked action, went in pilgrimage to Jerusalem as a work of 
 atonement ; where, being soundly scourged with broom twigs, which grew plentifully on thfl 
 spot, he ever after took the surname of Plantagenet, or broomstalk, which was retained by hte 
 noble posterity. (Encyclopedia.)
 
 292 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II 
 
 France; and these, in connection with his English dominions, ren- 
 dered him one of the most powerful monarchs in chris- 
 
 III. R.EDUC* 
 
 T:OV OF tendoiu. He also reduced Ireland' to a state of subjec 
 IRELAND. t j on ^ an( j f orma iiy annexed it to the English crown, al- 
 though the complete conquest of that country was not effected until 
 nearly four centuries later. By a wise and impartial administration 
 of the government, Henry gained the affections of his people ; but he 
 was long engaged in a kind of spiritual warfare with the pope, and 
 the close of his life was clouded by domestic misfortunes. His sons, 
 instigated by their mother, and aided by Louis VII., king of France, 
 repeatedly rebelled against him ; and he finally died of a broken 
 heart, after a long reign of thirty -five years. (A. D. 1189.) 
 
 10. Henry was succeeded by his eldest son Richard, surnamed 
 the Lion-hearted, who immediately on his accession, after plundering 
 his subjects of an immense sum of money, embarked on a crusade 
 to the Holy Land. After filling the world with his renown, being 
 wrecked in his homeward voyage, and travelling in disguise through 
 Germany, he was seized and imprisoned, and only obtained his lib 
 erty by an immense ransom, which was paid by his subjects. The 
 
 I. Ireland is a large island west of England, from which it is separated by the Irish Sea and 
 St. George's Channel. Its divisions, best known in history, are the four great provinces, Ulster 
 in the north, Leinster in the east, Connaught in the west, and Minister in the south. 
 
 Irish historians speak of Greek, Phoenician, Scotch, Spanish, and Gaulic colonies in Ireland, 
 before the Christian era; for which, however, there is no historical foundation. The oldest 
 authentic Irish records were written between the tenth and twelfth centuries ; but some of 
 them go back, with some consistency, as far as the Christian era. The early inhabitants of 
 Ireland were evidently more barbarous than even those of Britain. In the fifth century Christi- 
 anity was introduced among them by St. Patrick, a native of North Britain, who in his youth 
 had been carried a captive into Ireland ; but the new faith did not flourish until a century 01 
 two later; and it appears that, even then, the learning of the Irish clergy did not extend be- 
 yond the walls of the monasteries. In the ninth and tenth centuries the Danes made them- 
 selves masters of the greater part of the coasts of the island, while the interior, divided among 
 a number of barbarous and hostile chiefs, was agitated by internal wars, which no sense of 
 common dangers could interrupt. In the early part of the eleventh century. Brian Boru, king 
 of Munster, united the greater part of the island under his sceptre, and expelled the Danes ; 
 but soon after his death, A. D. 1014, the kingdom was again divided ; and sanguinary wars 
 continued to rage between opposing princes until the invasion by Henry II. of England, in the 
 year 1169. So early as 1155 Henry had projected the conquest of Ireland, and had obtained 
 from pope Adrian IV. fall permission to invade and subdue the Irish, for the purpose of re- 
 forming them. The grant was accompanied by a stipulation for the payment to St. Peter, of a 
 penny annually from every house in Ireland, this being the price for which the independence 
 of the Irish people was coolly bartered away. Henry, however, conquered only the four 
 counties Dublin, Meath, Louth, and Kildare, being a part of Leinster, on the eastern coast. 
 In 1315 Edward Bruce, brother of the king of Scotland, being invited over by the Irish, landed 
 in Ireland, and caused himself to be proclaimed king ; but not being well supported, he was 
 finally defeated and killed in the battle of Dundalk, in the year 1318, after which the Scotch 
 forces were witMrawn. u was not until the time of Cromwell that English supremacy wa 
 fullp estab:ihcd n every part of the bland. (Map No. XVI.)
 
 CHAP IL] MIDDLE AGES. 293 
 
 reign of this famous knight is chiefly signalized by his deeds in Pal- 
 estine, and is of little importance in English history. 
 
 1 1. Richard was succeeded by his profligate brother John, sur 
 named Lackland. (A. D. 1199.) In a long struggle with Philip 
 Augustus of France, John lost most of his continental possessions : 
 by stripping the church of its treasures he made the pope his enemy ; 
 and after a vain attempt to brave the storm of his vengeance, he 
 made a cowardly submission, swore allegiance to the pope, and 
 agreed to hold his kingdom tributary to the holy see. The barons, 
 provoked by the tyranny and vices of their sovereign, next took up 
 arms against him : they received with indignation the pope's decla- 
 ration in favor of his vassal, took possession of London, and 
 finally compelled the king to yield to their demands, and to sign the 
 Magna Charta, or Great Charter of rights and liberties, which laid 
 the first permanent foundation of British freedom. a John attempt- 
 ed to annul the conditions imposed, and, being absolved by the pope 
 from the oath which he had taken to the barons, he collected an 
 army of mercenary soldiers from Germany, and proceeded to lay 
 waste the kingdom ; but the barons proffered the crown to Louis, the 
 eldest son of the French monarch, who came over with a large army to 
 enforce his claims, when the sudden death of John arrested impending 
 dangers, and prevented England from becoming a province of France. 
 
 12. On the death of John, his eldest son, Henry III., then in 
 the tenth year of his age, was acknowledged king by the nobility and 
 the people. Henry was a weak and fickle sovereign ; and during his 
 long reign of more than half a century, the country was agitated by 
 internal commotions, caused by the king's prodigality, favoritism, op- 
 pressive exactions, and continual violation of the people's rights in direct 
 opposition to the principles of the Great Charter. Again the barons 
 resisted, and called a parliament, when the king was virtually de- 
 posed. (A. D. 1258.) An attempt to regain his authority led to 
 ail the horrors of civil war. In another parliament, called by the 
 barons, (A. D. 1265,) and embracing delegates from the counties, 
 cities, and boroughs, we find the first germs of popular representa- 
 tion in England ; and although, eventually, the baronial party, whoso 
 tyranny was found scarcely less than that of the king, was over- 
 thrown, yet their incautious innovation had already laid the basis of 
 the future House of Commons. 
 
 a. The Great Charter was signed on the 19th of June, 1215, at Runnymede, on the Thnmea, 
 between Staines and Wiud* jr
 
 294 MODERN HISTORY. [PAKT IL 
 
 13. Henry was succeeded by his son, Edward I., who, at the time 
 of his father's death, was absent on the last crusade to the Holy 
 Land. (A. D. 1272.) The active and splendid reign of this prince, 
 who lift behind him the character of a great statesman and com- 
 mand >r, was mostly occupied with the attempt to unite the whole of 
 Great Britain under one sovereignty. When Llewellyn, prince of 
 
 UBJU- Wales, 1 refused to perform the customary homage to the 
 GATION OF English crown, Edward declared war against him, over- 
 WALES. ran ^g coun t r y, and subdued it, after a brave resistance. 
 (12771283.) 
 
 14. The remainder of Edward's reign was filled with attempts to 
 subjugate Scotland, to which country the English monarch laid 
 claim as lord paramount, by the rights of fealty and succession. A 
 Scotch king, taken prisoner by Henry II., had been compelled, as the 
 price of his release, to do homage for his crown ; and the same had 
 been demanded of later princes, in return for lands which they held 
 in England. By the death of Alexander III. of Scotland, in the 
 year 1283, the crown, devolved on his grand daughter the princess 
 Margaret, who was a niece of Edward I. of England. This lady 
 was soon after affianced to Edward's only son, the prince of Wales; 
 and thus the prospect of uniting the crowns of the two kingdoms 
 seemed near at hand, when the frail bond of union was suddenly 
 destroyed by the untimely death of the princess. 
 
 15. The two principal Scotch competitors for the crown were now 
 John Baliol and Robert Bruce, who agreed to submit their claims to 
 the decision of Edward. The latter decided in favor of Baliol, on 
 condition of his becoming a vassal of the English king. (A. D. 1292.) 
 
 1. Wales, anciently called Cambria, a principality in the west of Great Britain, having on 
 the north and west the Irish Sea, and on the south and south-west Bristol Channel, is about one 
 hundred and flfiy miles in length from north to south, and from fifty to eighty in breadth. The 
 Welsh are descendants of the ancient Britons, who, being driven out of England by the Anglo 
 Saxons, took refuge in the mountain fastnesses of Wales, or fled to the continent of Europe, 
 where they gave their name to Brittany. In the ninth century Wales was divided into three 
 sovereignties, North Wales, South Wales, and the intermediate district called Powis^ the 
 reigning princes of which were held together by some loose ties of confederacy. In the year 
 933 the English king Athelstan compelled the Welsh principalities to become his tributaries; 
 aiv 1 upon the treaty then concluded with them, founded on the feudal relation of lord and vas- 
 sal, the Normans based their claim of lordship paramount over all Wales. During the 
 eleventh and twel .th centuries, South Wales was the scene of frequent contests between the 
 Welsh and Normans. When Edward I. claimed feudal homage of Llewellyn, the duty of 
 fealty was acknowledged by the latter; but he was unwilling, by going to London, to place 
 himself in the power of a monarch who had recently violated a solemn treaty with him ; and 
 heuce urose a war which resulted in the death of Llewellyn, 1 and the subjugation of hia 
 OHUttry. A. D 1282-5. (Map No. XVI.)
 
 CHAP. II] MIDDLE AGES. 295 
 
 The impatient temper ol' Baliol could not brook the humiliating acts 
 of vassalage required of him ; and when war broke out between 
 France and England, he refused military aid to the latter, and con- 
 cluded a treaty of alliance with the French monarch. (A. D. 1292.) 
 War between England and Scotland followed ; and Baliol, after a 
 brief resistance, being defeated in the great battle of 
 
 v. FCOTTISII 
 
 Dunbar, 1 was forced to make submission to Edward in 
 terms of abject supplication. The victor returned to 
 London, carrying with him not only the Scottish crown and sceptre, 
 but also the sacred stone on which the Scottish monarchs were placed 
 when they received the royal inauguration. (A. D. 1296.) 
 
 16. Scarcely, however, had Edward crossed the frontiers, when the 
 Scots reasserted their independence, and under the brave Sir Wil- 
 liam Wallace, a man of obscure birth, but worthy to be ranked 
 among the foremost of patriots, defeated the English at Stirling," 
 and recovered the whole of Scotland as rapidly as it had been lost. 
 Again Edward advanced, at the head of a gallant muster of all the 
 English chivalry, and the Scots were defeated at Falkirk- 3 (A. D. 
 1298.) The adherents of Wallace mutinied against him; and a 
 few years later the hero of Scotland was treacherously betrayed into 
 the hands of Edward, and being condemned for the pretended crime 
 of treason, was infamously executed, to the lasting dishonor of the 
 English king. (A. D. 1305.) 
 
 17. The cause of Scottish freedom was revived by Robert Bruce, 
 grandson of the Bruce who had been competitor for the throne 
 against Baliol. In the spring of the year 1306 he was crowned 
 king at Scone 4 by the revolted barons. In the following year, Ed- 
 
 1. Dunbar is a seaport of Scotland, twenty-seven miles north-east from Edinburgh. The 
 ancient castle of Dunbar, the scene of many warlike exploits, stood on a lofty rock, the base 
 of which was washed by the sea. It was taken by Edward I. in 1296 ; four times it received 
 within its walls the unfortunate Queen Mary ; and it was in the vicinity of Dunbar that Crom- 
 well defeated the Scots under General Leslie, in 1650. (Map No. XVI.) 
 
 2. Stirling- is a river port and fortress of Scotland, on the Forth, thirty miles north-weat from 
 Edinburgh. Its fine old castle is placed on a basaltic rock, rising abruptly three hundred feet 
 from the river's edge. (Map No. XVI.) 
 
 3. Falkirk is an ancient town of Scotland, twenty-two miles north-west from Edinburgh, and 
 three miles south of the Frith of Forth. In the valley, a little north of the town, the Scotch, 
 under Wallace, were defeated on the 22d of July, 1298. In this battle fell Sir John Stewart, 
 the commander of the Scottish archers, and Sir John the Grahame, the bosom friend of Wal- 
 lace. The tomb of Grahame, which the gratitude of his countrymen has thrice renewed, is 
 to be seen in the churchyard of Falkirk. On a moor, half a mile south-west from the town, 
 Charles Stuart, the Pretender, gained a victory over the royal army in 1746. (Map No. XVI. r.) 
 
 4. Sane, now a small village of Scotland, is a little above Perth, on the river Tay, eighteen 
 miles w >st from Dundee, and thirty-five north-west from Edinburgh. It was formerly the real-
 
 296 MODERN HISTORY. [PAEI IL 
 
 ward, assembling a mighty army, to render resistance hopeless, took 
 the field against him, but he died on his march, and the expedition 
 was abandoned by his son and successor, Edward II. , in opposition 
 to the dying injunctions of his father. ^A. D. 1307.) Still the war 
 continued, and the Scotch were generally successful ; but after seven 
 years Edward himself marched against the rebels at the head of 
 more than a hundred thousand men; but being met by Bruce at the 
 head of little more than a third of that number, he experienced a 
 total defeat in the battle of Bannockburn, 1 which established the in- 
 dependence of Scotland. (A. D. June 24th, 1314.) 
 
 18. The northern nations of Europe, during the tenth, eleventh, 
 twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, were much less advanced in civilization 
 than those which sprung from the wrecks of the Roman empire ; and 
 their obscure annals offer little to our notice but the germs of rude king- 
 doms in the early stages of formation. In the south-west of Europe, 
 the wars between the Moors and Christians of the Spanish peninsula 
 had already continued during a period of more than five centuries, 
 with ever-varying results ; but the overthrow of the Western cali- 
 phate of Cordova, in the year 1030, followed by the dismemberment 
 of the Moham' medan empire of Spain, into several independent 
 States, (A. D. 1238,) struck a fatal blow at the Saracen dominion. 
 But, unfortunately, the Christian provinces also were little united, 
 and it was not uncommon for the Christian princes to form alliances 
 with the Moors against one another. The founding of the Moorish 
 kingdom of Granada, in 1238, for a ,time delayed the fall of the 
 Moslems ; but the Christians gradually extended their power, until, 
 near the close of the fifteenth century, Granada yielded to the tor- 
 rent that had long been setting against it, and with its fall the su- 
 premacy of the Christian faith and power was acknowledged through- 
 out the peninsula. a 
 
 deuce of the Scottish kings the place of their coronation and has been the scene of many 
 historical events. The remains of its ancient palace are incorporated with the mansion of the 
 carl of Mansfield. (Map No. XVI.) 
 
 1. Bannockburn, the name of which is inseparably connected with one of the most mem- 
 orable events in British history, is three miles south-west from Stirling. About one mile west 
 from the village James, III. was defeated in 1488, by his rebellious subjects and his son James 
 IV., and, after being wmnded in the engagement, was assassinated at a mill in the vic'nity. 
 ^Map No. XVI.) 
 
 a. See next Section, pp. 317-18. and Notes.
 
 CHAP. IL] MIDDLE AGES. 297 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 GENERAI HItf] DRY DUEIXG THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES. 
 
 1. ENGLAND AND FRANCE DURING THE FOURTEENTH AND 
 FIFTEENTH CENTURIES. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. Continuation of the histories of France and England. 2. Defeat of Edward 
 
 II. in the battle of Bannockburn. Edward offends the barons. [Gascony.] The Great Charter 
 confirmed, and annual parliaments ordained. 3. Rebellion of the barons, and death of Ed 
 ward. Reign of Edward III. Invasion of Scotland. [Halidon Hill.] 
 
 FRENCH AND ENGLISH WARS. 4. Edward disputes the succession to the throne of France 
 Invasion of France, and battle of Cressy. [Cressy.] Defeat of the Scots, and capture of Calais. 
 [Durham. Calais.] 5. Renewal of the war with France, and victory of Poictiers. (1356.) 
 Anarchy in France. Treaty of Bretigny. The conquered territory. [Bretigny. Aquitaine. 
 Bordeaux.] 6. Renewal of the war with France in 13G8. Relative condition of the two powers. 
 The French recover their provinces. [Bayonne. Brest, and Cherbourg.] 7. Death of Edward 
 
 III. of England, and Charles V. of France. The distractions that followed in both kingdoms. 
 [Orleans. Lancaster. Gloucester.] Wat Tyler's insurrection. [Blackheath.] 8. Character 
 >f Richard II. He is deposed, and succeeded by Henry IV. (1399.) The legal claimant. 
 Origin of the contentions between the houses of York and Lancaster. 9. Insurrection against 
 Henry. [Shrewsbury.] 10. Accession of Henry V., and happy change in his character. He 
 invades France, and defeats the French in the battle of Agincourt. 11. Civil war in France, 
 nd return of Henry. The treaty with the Burguudian faction. Opposition of the Orleans 
 party. [The States General. The dauphin.] 12. The infant king of the English, Henry VI., 
 and the French king Charles VII. Joan of Arc. Her declared mission. 13. Successes of the 
 French, and fate of Joan. 14. The English gradually lose all their continental possessions, ex 
 cept Calais. Tranquillity in France. 
 
 15. Unpopularity of the reigning English family. Popular insurrection. Beginning of the 
 WARS OF THE Two ROSES. [St. Albans.] 16. Sanguinary character of the strife. First period 
 of the war closes with the accession of Edward IV., of the house of York. 17. The French 
 king. The reign of Edward IV. The earl of Warwick. Overthrow of the Lancastrians. 
 The fate of Margaret, her son, and the late king Henry IV. [Warwick. Tewkesbury.] 18. 
 The cotemporary reign of Louis XI. of France. The relations of Edward and Louis. 19. 
 Fate of Edward V., and accession of Richard III. Defeat and death of Richard, and end of 
 the " Wars of the Two Roses." [Richmond. Bosworth.] 
 
 20. REION OF HENRY VII. The impostors Siinnel and Warbeck. [Dublin.] 2l. Treaties 
 with France and Scotland. The Scottish marriage. 22. Why the reign of Henry VII. is an 
 Important epoch in English history. 
 
 II. OTHER NATIONS AT THE CLOSE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 1. DENMARK, SWEDEN AND NORWAY. Union of Calmar. [Calmar.] 
 
 2. The RUSSIAN EMPIRE. Its early history. [Dnieper. Novogorod.] Divisions of the 
 kingdom in the eleventh century. 3. Tartar invasions. The reign of John III. duke of Mos- 
 low. Russia at the end of the fifteenth century. 4. Founding of the OTTOMAN EMPIRE, on the 
 ruins of the Eastern or Greek empire. [Emir.] The Turkish empire at the close of the four- 
 teenth century. The sultan Bajazet overthrown by Tamerlane. 5. The TARTAR EMPIRE OP 
 TAMERLANE. Defeat of the Turks. Turks and Christians unite against the Tartars. Deatb 
 of Tamerlane. [Samarcand. Angora.] 6. Taking of Constantinople by the Turks, and 
 extinction of the Eastern empire. 
 
 7. POLAND. Commencement and early history of Poland. Extent of the kingdom at the 
 close of the fifteenth century. [Poland. Lithuania. Teutonic knights. Moldavia.] 8. The 
 GERMAN EMPIRE at the close of the fifteenth century. Elective monarchs. 9. Causes that 
 renJer the history of Germany exceedingly complicated. The three powerful States of Ger- 
 many about the middle of the fourteenth century. [Luxemburg. Bohemia. Moravia Silesia. 
 
 ,,*
 
 298 MODERN HISTORY. [PABT II 
 
 Lusatia. Brandenburg. Holland. Tyrol. Austria.] 10. Austrian princes of Germany. Im- 
 portant changes made during the reign of Maximilian. [Worms.] 11. SWITZIRLAND revolts 
 from Austria. Long-continued wars. Switzerland independent at the close of tlie fifteenth 
 century. [Rutuli. William Tell. Morgarten. Sempach.] 12. ITALIAN HISTORY during the 
 central period of the Middle Ages. The Italian republics. [Genoa.] Duchy of Milan. 13. 
 The Florentines. Contests between the Genoese and Venetians. [Levant.] Genoa at the 
 close of the fifteenth century. 14. History of Venice. Her power at the end of the fifteenth 
 century. [Morea.] The popes, and kings of Naples.- Interference of foreign powers. 15. 
 SPAIN. Union of the most powerful Christian States. Overthrow of the Saracen domini;ns in 
 Spain. [Navarre. Aragon. Castile. Leon. Granada.] 16. History of PORTUOAL. [Farther 
 account of Portugal.] 
 
 m. DISCOVERIES. 
 
 1. Navigation, and geographical knowledge, during the Dark Ages. Revival of commerce. 
 [Pisa.] Discovery of the magnetic needle. The art of printing. Discovery of the Canaries, 
 Portuguese discoveries. [Canaries. Cape de Verd and Azore islands.] 2. Views and objects 
 of Prince Henry. His death. Fame of the discoveries patronized by him. Christopher Co- 
 lumbus. The bold project conceived by him. [Lisbon. Ireland. Guinea.] 3. The trials of 
 Columbus. His final triumph, in the discovery of America. Vasco de Gama. Closing 
 remarks. 
 
 1. ENGLAND AND FRANCE DURING THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH 
 CENTURIES. 1. France and England occupy the most prominent 
 place in the history of European nations during the closing period 
 of the Middle Ages ; and as their annals, during most of this period, 
 are so intimately connected that the history of one nation is in great 
 part the history of both, the unity of the subject will best be pre- 
 served, and repetition avoided, by treating both in connection. 
 
 2. The reign of Edward II. of England, whose defeat by the 
 Scots in the famous battle of Bannockburn has already been men- 
 tioned, although inglorious to himself, and disastrous to the British 
 arms, was not, on the whole, unfavorable to the progress of constitu- 
 tional liberty. The unbounded favoritism of Edward to Gaveston, 
 a handsome youth of Gascony, 1 whom the king elevated in wealth 
 and dignities above all the nobles in England, roused the resentment 
 of the barons ; and the result was the banishment of the favorite, 
 and a reformation of abuses in full parliament. (A. D. 1313.) The 
 Great Charter, so often violated, was again confirmed ; and the im 
 portant provision was added, that there should be an annual assem 
 bling of parliament, for protection of the people, when " aggrieved 
 by the king's ministers against right." 
 
 3. But other favorities supplied the place of Gaveston : the 
 nobles rebelled against their sovereign : his faithless queen Isabella, 
 sister of the king of France, took part with the malcontents, and 
 
 1. Gascony, before the French Revolution, was a province of France, situated between the 
 Garonne, the sea, and ',he Pyrenees. The Gascons are a people of much spirit ; but their exag- 
 geration in describing .heir exploits has made the term gasconade proverbial. (Map No. XIII.)
 
 CHAP. ILJ MIDDLE AGES. 299 
 
 Edward was deposed, imprisoned, and afterwards murdered. (A. D. 
 1327.) Edward III., crowned at fourteen years of age, unable to 
 endure the presence of a mother stained with the foulest crimes, 
 caused her to be imprisoned for life, and her paramour, Mortimer, 
 to be executed. He then applied himself to redress the grievances 
 which had proceeded from the late abuses of authority ; after which 
 he invaded Scotland, and defeated the Scots at Halidou Hill; 1 but 
 on his withdrawal from the country, the Scottish arms again tri- 
 umphed. 
 
 4. On the death, in the year 1328, of Charles IV. of France, the 
 last of the male descendants of Philip the Fair, the , 
 
 * I. FRENCH 
 
 crown of that kingdom became the object of contest be- AND ENGLISH 
 tween Edward III. of England, the son of Philip's WAR8 ' 
 daughter Isabella, and Philip of Valois, son of the brother of Philip. 
 After war had continued several years between the two nations, with 
 only occasional intervals of truce, in the year 1346 Edward, in per- 
 son, invaded France, and, supported by his heroic son Edward, called 
 the Black Prince, then only fifteen years of age, gained a great vic- 
 tory over the French in the famous battle of Cressy* slaying more 
 of the enemy than the total number of his own army. (Aug. 26th, 
 1346.) A few weeks after the battle of Cressy, the Scots, who had 
 seized the opportunity of Edward's absence to invade England, were 
 defeated in the battle of Durham, 3 and their king David Bruce taken 
 prisoner. (Oct. 17, 1346.) To crown the honors of the campaign, 
 the important seaport of Calais, 4 in France, surrendered to Edward, 
 after a vigorous siege ; and this important acquisition was retained 
 by the English more than two centuries. 
 
 1. Halidon Hill is an eminence north of the river Tweed, not far from Berwick. 
 
 2. Cressy, or Crecy, is a small village, in the former province of Picardy, ninety-five miles 
 north-west from Paris. It is believed that cannon, but of very rude construction, were flnt 
 employed by the English in this battle. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 3. Durham, the capital of the county of the same name, is an important city in the north of 
 England, two hundred and thirty miles north-west from London. The field on which the bat- 
 fle was fought, some distance north of Durham, on the road to Newcastle, (Oct. ]7th, 134Q,) 
 was called Neville's Cross. (Map No. XVI.) 
 
 4. Calais (Eng. Cal-is, Fr. Kah-Ia',) a seaport of France, on the Straits of Dover, in the 
 former province of Picardy, is fifty miles north of Cressy. In 1558 Calais was retaken by sur- 
 prise by the duke of Guise. In 1596 it was again taken by the English under the archduke 
 Albert, but in 1598 was restored to France by the treaty of Nervins. 
 
 The obstinate resistance which Calais made to Edward III. in 1347, is said to have so much 
 ince". the conqueror that he determined to put to death six principal burgesses of the town, 
 who, to save their fellow citizens, had magnanimously placed themselves at his disposal ; but 
 that he was turned from his purpose only by the tears and entreaties of his queen Fhilippa. R 
 Is believed, however, that Froissart alone, among his cotempraries, relates th' storj; and 
 ioubts may very reasonably be entertained of its truth. (Map No. XIII.)
 
 300 MODERN HISTORY. I PART II. 
 
 5. After a truce of eight years, during which occurred the death 
 of the French monarch, Philip of Valois, and the accession of his 
 son John to the throne of France, war was again renewed, but was 
 speedily terminated by a great victory, which the Black Prince ob 
 tained over king John in the battle of Poictiers. (Sept. 1356.) The 
 French monarch, although taken prisoner, and conveyed in triumph 
 to London, was treated with great moderation and kindness ; but his 
 captivity produced in France the most horrible anarchy, which was 
 carried to the utmost extreme by a revolt of peasants, or serfs, 
 against their lords, in most of the provinces surrounding the capital. 11 
 At length, while king John was still a prisoner, the two nations con- 
 cluded a treaty at Bretigny, 1 (A. D. 13GO,) which provided that king 
 John should be restored to liberty, and that the English monarch 
 should renounce his claim to the throne of France, and to the pos- 
 session of Normandy and other provinces in the north ; but that the 
 whole south-west of France, embracing more than a third of the 
 kingdom, and extending from the Rhone nearly to the Loire, should 
 be guaranteed to England. The territory obtained from France 
 was erected into the principality of Aquitame,* the government of 
 which was intrusted to the Black Prince, who, during several years, 
 kept his court at Bordeaux. 3 
 
 6. The treaty with France was never fully ratified ; and in the 
 year 1368 war between the two countries was commenced anew, the 
 blame of the rupture being thrown by each nation upon the other. 
 In the interval since the late treaty a great change had taken place 
 in the condition of the rival powers : king Edward was now declining 
 in age ; and his son the Black Prince was enfee.bled by disease ; and 
 
 the ceded French provinces were eager to return to their native king ; 
 while, on the other hand, France had recovered from her great losses, 
 and the wise and popular Charles V. occupied the throne, in the 
 place of the rash and intemperate John. France gradually recovered 
 
 1. Bretigny is a small hamlet six miles south-east from Chartres, and fifty miles south-west 
 Trom Paris, in the former province of Orleans. 
 
 2. Jlquitaine (Jlquitaniu) was the name of the Roman province in Gaul south of the Loire. 
 Since the time of the Romans it has been sometimes a kingdom and sometimes a duchy. Be- 
 fore the revolution, what remained of this ancient province passed under the name of Gui- 
 eiine. Bordeaux was its capital. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 3. Bordeaux, called by the Romans Burdigala, an important commercial city and seaport of 
 France, is on the west bank of the Garonne, fifty-five miles from its mouth, find three hundred 
 nnd seven miles south-west from Paris. Montesquieu and Montaigne, Edward the Black Prince, 
 pope Clement V., and Richard 13. of England, were natives of this city. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 a. Feb. 1358. This revolt was called La Jacquerie^ from Jacqu< Ben Homme, tte leader 
 of the rebels.
 
 CHAP. II] MIDDLE AGES. 301 
 
 nas.J * 
 
 most of her provinces without obtainining a single victory, although 
 
 the keys of the country Bordeaux, Bayonne, 1 Calais, Brest, anc 
 Cherbourg 2 were still left in the hands of the English. 
 
 7. On the death of Edward (A. D. 1377) the crown fell to the 
 son of the Black Prince, Richard II., then only eleven years of age. 
 Three years later, Charles V., by his death, left the crown of France 
 to his son Charles VI., a youth of only twelve years. Both kingdoms 
 suffered from the distractions attending a regal minority : in France 
 the people were plundered by the exactions of the regents, and the 
 kingdom harassed by the factious struggles for power between the 
 dukes of Bur' gundy and Orleans ;* and in England similar results 
 attended the contests for the regency between the king's uncles, the 
 dukes of Lancaster, 4 York, 6 and Gloucester. 6 In the year 1381 the 
 injustice of parliamentary taxation occasioned a famous revolt of 
 
 1. Bayonne is on the south side of the Adour, four miles from its mouth, near the south- 
 western extremity of France. Bayonne is strongly fortified, and, although often besieged, has 
 never been taken. The military weapon called the bayonet takes its name from this city, where 
 it is said to have been first invented, and brought into use at the siege of Bayonne, during the 
 war between Francis I. and Charles V. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. Brest and Cherbourg are small but strongly-fortified seaport towns in the north-west of 
 France. Cherbourg was the last town in Normandy retained by the English. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 3. Bur' gundy and Orleans. An account of Bur' gundy has already been given. Orleans, a 
 city of France, and formerly capital of the province of the same name, is situated on the 
 Loire, sixty-eight miles south-west from Paris. Orleans occupied the site of the ancient Gena- 
 bum, the emporium of the CorniUes, which was taken and burned by Czesar. (Ciesar B. 
 VII. 12.) It subsequently rose to great eminence, and was unsuccessfully besieged by At' tila 
 and Odoacer. It became the capital of the first kingdom of Bur' gundy under the first race of 
 French kings. Philip of Valois erected it into a duchy and peerage in favor of his son; and 
 Orleans has since continued to give the title of duke to a prince of the blood royal. Charles 
 VI. conferred the title of "duke of Orleans" on his younger brother, who became the founder 
 of the Valois-Orleans line. Louis XIV. conferred it on his younger brother Philip, the founder 
 of the Bourbon dynasty of the house of Orleans. Louis Philip was the first and only ruliug 
 prince of the Bourbon-Orleans dynasty. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 4. Lancaster, which has given its name to the "dukes of Lancaster," is a seaport town on 
 the coast of the Irish Sea. forty-six miles from Liverpool, and two hundred and five miles 
 north-west from London. Lancaster is supposed, from the urns, altars, and other antiquities 
 found there, to have been a Roman station. The first earl of Lancaster was created in 126G. 
 In 1351 Henry, earl of Derby, was made duke of Lancaster : John Gaunt, fourth son of Ed- 
 ward III., married Blanch, the duke's daughter, and, by virtue of this alliance, succeeded to 
 the title. His son Henry of Bolingbroke became duke of Lancaster on his father's death in 
 1398, and finally Henry IV., king of England in 1399, from which time to the present this 
 duchy has been associated with the regal dignity. (Map No. XVI.) 
 
 5. York, See Note, p. 209. (Map No. XVI.) 
 
 6. Gloucester is on the east bank of the Severn, ninety-three miles north-west from London. 
 It was founded by "the Romans A. D. 44 ; and Roman coins and antiquities are frequently dug 
 up on the supposed site of the old encampment. Richard II. created his uncles dukes of York 
 and Gloucester ; and since that time the ducal title has remained the highest title of Englist 
 nobility. The duke of Lancaster was the only one who really possessed a duchy (the countj 
 of Lancaster; subject to his government, and .hat was reunited to the crown in 1461. (Mat 
 o. XVL)
 
 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II. 
 
 the lower classes, h jaded by the Blacksmith Wat Tyler, similar to 
 the insurrection of the French peasants which raged in 1358. In 
 both nations these events mark the advance of the serfs, in their 
 progress toward emancipation, to that stage in which their hopes are 
 roused, and their wrongs still unredressed. The serfs of Englanl 
 demanded equal laws, and the abolition of bondage : to the number 
 of sixty thousand they assembled at Blackheath, 1 obtained possess- 
 ion of London, and put to death the chancellor and primate, as evil 
 counsellors of the crown, and cruel oppressors of the people ; but 
 the fall of their leader struck terror into the insurgents, and the re- 
 volt was easily extinguished, while the honor of the crown was sul- 
 lied by a revocation of the promised charters of enfranchisement 
 and pardon. More than fifteen hundred , of the mutineers perished 
 by the hand of the hangman, 
 
 8. It was not till the age of twenty-three that Richard escaped 
 from the tutelage of his uncles ; and then his indolence, dissipation, 
 and prodigality, brought him into contempt ; and during his absence 
 in Ireland a successful revolution elevated his cousin, Henry of Lan- 
 caster, surnamed Bolingbroke, to the throne. (A. D. 1399.) The 
 parliament confirmed the deposition of Richard, who was soon after 
 privately assassinated in prison. a The accession of Henry IV. to 
 the throne met with no opposition, although he was not the legal 
 claimant, the hereditary right being in Edward Mortimer, who was 
 descended from the second son of Edward III., whereas Henry was 
 descended from the third son. The claim of Mortimer was at a 
 later period vested by marriage in the family of the duke of York, 
 descended from the fourth son of Edward; and hence began the 
 contentions between the houses of York and Lancaster. 
 
 9. The discontented friends of Henry proved his most dangerous 
 enemies ; for the Percys, who had enthroned him, dissatisfied with 
 his administration, took up arms and involved the country in civil 
 war ; b but in the great battle of Shrewsbury 2 (July 21, 1403) the 
 
 1. Blackhe.ath is an elevated moory tract in the vicinity of the British metropolis, south-west 
 of the city. The greater portion is in the parish of Greenwich. 
 
 2. Shrewsbury is situated on the Severn, one hundred and thirty-eight miles north-west from 
 London. William the Conqueror gave the town and surrounding country to Roger de Montr 
 gomery, who built here a strong baronial castle ; but in 1102 the castle and property were for- 
 feited to the crown. Shrewsbury, from its situation -close to Wales, was the scene of many 
 border frays between the Welsh and Engjjsh. In the battle of July 1403, the fall ~f the famoui 
 Lord Percy, surnamed Hotspur, by an unknown hand, decided the victory in the ring's favor. 
 (Map No. XVI.) 
 
 n. Read Shabspeare's "King Richard II." 
 
 b. Read Shaktpeare's " First Part of King Henry IV
 
 CHAP. II] MIDDLE AGES. 303 
 
 insurgents were defeated, although the insurrection was still kept up 
 a number of years, chiefly by the successful valor of Owen Glendower, 
 the Welsh ally of the Percys. 
 
 10. Henry IV. was succeeded by his son Henry Y. in the year 
 1413. The previous turbulent and dissipated character of the new 
 sovereign had given little promise of a happy reign ; but immediate- 
 ly after his accession he dismissed the former companions of his 
 vices, took into his confidence the wise ministers of his father, 
 and, laying aside his youthful pleasures, devoted all his energies to 
 the tranquillizing of the kingdom, and the wise government of the 
 people. a Taking advantage of the disorders of France, and the tem- 
 porary insanity of its sovereign Charles VI., he revived the English 
 claim to the throne of that kingdom, and at the head of thirty thou- 
 sand men passed over into Normandy to support his pretensions. 
 After his army had been wasted by a contagious disease, which re- 
 duced it to eleven thousand men, he met and defeated the French 
 army of fifty thousand in the battle of Agincourt, 1 slaying ten 
 thousand of the enemy and taking fourteen thousand prisoners, among 
 whom were many of the most eminent barons and princes of the 
 realm. (Oct. 24, 1415.) 
 
 1 1. The Orleans and Burgundian factions which had temporarily 
 laid aside their contentions to oppose the invader, renewed them on 
 the departure of Henry, and soon involved the kingdom in the hor- 
 rors of civil war. In the midst of these evils Henry returned to 
 follow up his victory, and fought his way to Paris, when the Bur- 
 gundian faction tendered him the crown of France, with the promise 
 of its aid to support his claim. A treaty was soon concluded with 
 the queen of the insane king and the duke of Bur' gundy, by which 
 it was agreed that Henry should marry Catherine, the daughter of 
 Charles, and succeed to the throne on the death of her father ; while 
 in the meantime he was to govern the kingdom as regent. (May, 
 1420.) The States General 5 of the kingdom assented to the treaty,' 
 and the western and northern provinces owned the sway of England; 
 but the central and south-eastern districts adhered to the cause of 
 
 1. Jlgincm.n is a small village of France In the former province of Artois, one hundred and 
 .en miles north from Paris. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. By the States General is meant the great council or general parliament of the nation, 
 composed of representatives from the nubility, the clergy, and the municipalities. The country 
 districts sent no representatives. (See University Edition, p. 824.) 
 
 a. Happily portrayed in Shakspeare's " Second Par of King Henry IV," Vet v., Scene U. 
 and v.
 
 304 MODERN HISTORY. [P^ 1 * li- 
 
 the dauphin, 1 afterwards Charles VII., the only sui-viring son of his 
 father, and the head of the Orleans party. Henry V. did not live to 
 wear the crown of France ; and the helpless Charles survived him 
 only two months. (Died A. D. 1422.) 
 
 12. The English king left a son, Henry VI., then only nine 
 months old, to inherit his kingdom. France, however, was now 
 openly divided between the rival monarchs its native sovereign 
 Charles VII., and the English king, in the person of the infant 
 Henry. In the war which followed, the prospects of the English 
 were gradually improving, when they received a fatal check from the 
 extraordinary appearance of a heroine, the famous Joan of Arc, 
 whom the credulity of the age believed to have been divinely com- 
 missioned for the salvation of the French nation. Moved by a sort 
 of religious phrensy, this obscure country girl was enabled to inspire 
 her sovereign, the priests, the nobles, and the army, with the truth 
 of her holy mission, which was, to drive the English from Orleans, 
 which they were then besieging, and to open the way for the crown- 
 ing of Charles at Rheims, then in the hands of the enemy. 
 
 13. Superstition revived the hopes of the French, and inspired 
 the English with manifold terrors the harbingers of certain defeat : 
 in a short period all the promises of the maiden were fulfilled, and 
 in accordance with her predictions she had the happiness to see 
 Charles VII. crowned in the cathedral. Her mission ended, she 
 wished to retire to the humble station from which Providence had 
 called her, but being retained with the army, she afterwards fell into 
 the hands of the English, who inhumanly condemned and executed 
 her for the imaginary crime of sorcery. 
 
 14. In the death of Joan of Arc the English indeed destroyed the 
 cause of their late reverses ; but nothing could stay the new impulse 
 which her wonderful successes had given to the French nation. In 
 the year 1437 Charles gained possession of his capital, after twenty 
 years exclusion from it ; the Burgundian faction had previously be- 
 come reconciled to him, and thenceforward the war lost its serious 
 character, while the struggle of the English grew more and more 
 feeble, until, in 1453, Calais was the only town of the continent re- 
 maining in their hands. From this period until the death of 
 
 1. Dauphin is the title of the eldest son of the king of France. In 1349 Humbert II. trans- 
 ferred his estate, the province of Dauphiny, to Philip of Valois, on condition that the eldest 
 ion of the king of France should, in future, be called the dauphin, and govern this territory. 
 The dauphin, however, retains only the title, the estates having long been united with the 
 ircwn lands.
 
 CHAP. IL] MIDDLE AGES. 306 
 
 Charles VII., 11* .461, Franje enjoyed domestic tranquillity, while 
 civil wars of the fiercest violence were raging in England. 
 
 15. The hereditary claim of the house of York to the English 
 throne has already been mentioned, (p. 302.) Henry was a weak 
 prince, and subject to occasional fits of idiocy ; but his wife, Marga- 
 ret of Anjou, 1 a woman of great spirit and ambition, possessing the 
 allurements, but without the virtues, of her sex, ruled in his name. 
 The haughtiness of the queen, the dishonor brought on the English 
 arms by the loss of France, and the imbecility and insignificance of 
 Henry, when contrasted with the popular virtues of Richard duke 
 of York, rendered the reigning family unpopular with the nation ; 
 and when Richard advanced his pretensions to the crown, a powerful 
 party rallied to his support. A formidable rising of the people in 
 the year 1450, under a leader who is known in history under the 
 nickname of Jack Cade, first manifested the gathering n THE WARg 
 discontent. Five years later civil war between the York- OF THE TWO 
 ists and Lancastrians broke out in different parts of the 
 kingdom ; and in the first battle, at St. Albans, 2 King Henry was 
 taken prisoner. The Yorkists wore, as the symbol of their party, a 
 white rose, and the Lancastrians a red rose ; and the contests which 
 marked their struggle for power are usually called the " wars of the 
 two roses." 
 
 16. We have not room to enter into details of the sanguinary 
 strife that followed. " In my remembrance," says a cotemporary 
 writer , a " eighty princes of the blood royal of England perished in 
 these convulsions ; seven or eight battles were fought in the course 
 of thirty years ; and their own country was desolated by the English 
 as cruelly as the former generation had wasted France." After many 
 vicissitudes of fortune, in which Henry was twice defeated and taken 
 prisoner, and Richard and his second son were slain, at the close of 
 the first period of the war the white rose triumphed, and Edward 
 IV., eldest son of the late duke of York, became king of England. 
 (A. D. 1461.) 
 
 1 7. Charles VII. of France died the same year, and was succeed- 
 
 1. Anjou was an ancient province of France, on both sides of the Loire, north of Poiton. 
 In the year .246 Louis IX. of France bestowed this province en his younger brother Charles, 
 with the title of count of Anjou ; but in 1328 it fell to the crown, at the accession of Philip VI. 
 Subsequently different princes of the blood bore the title of Anjou; and Margaret, who be- 
 came queen of England, was the daughter of Ren6 of Anjou. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. St. Mbans is a small town twenty miles north-west from London. 
 a. Philip de Comines. 
 
 20
 
 306 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 ed on the threie by his son Louis XI. The reign of Edward IV 
 of England was a reign of terror. Once he was deposed, and Henry- 
 reinstated, by the great power and influence of the earl of Warwick, 1 
 to whom the people gave the name of king-maker. But Warwick 
 afterwards fell in battle; and in the year 1471 the heroic Margaret 
 and her son were defeated and taken prisoners, and the power of the 
 Lancastrians was overthrown in the desperate battle of Tewkesbury," 1 
 which concluded this sanguinary war. Margaret was at first im- 
 prisoned, but afterwards ransomed by the king of France : her son 
 was assassinated : Henry VI. breathed his last, as a prisoner, in the 
 Tower of London ; and Edward was finally established on the throne. 
 
 18. The reign of Edward IV. was throughout cotemporary with 
 that of Louis XI. of France, a prince of a tyrannical, superstitious, 
 crafty, and cruel nature, but who possessed such a fund of comic 
 hhmor, and such oddities of thoughts and manner, as to throw his 
 atrocious cruelties into the shade. The relations of these two princes 
 with each other were in a high degree dishonorable to both. Ed- 
 ward, by threatening war upon France, obtained from Louis the 
 secret payment of exorbitant pensions for himself and his ministers ; 
 and the latter were with much reason charged with being the hired 
 agents of the French king. Both these princes died in 1483, and 
 both were succeeded by minors. 
 
 19. Edward V., at the age of twelve years, succeeded his father 
 as king of England ; but after a nominal reign of little more than 
 two months, the young king and his brother the duke of York were 
 murdered in the Tower, at the instigation of their uncle the duke of 
 Gloucester, who caused himself to be proclaimed king, with the title 
 of Richard III. But the whole nation was alienated by the crimes 
 of Richard : the claims of the Lancastrian family were revived by 
 Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond;' and at the decisive battle of Bos- 
 
 1. The earldom of V/arwick dates from the time of William the Conqueror, who bestowed 
 the town and castle of that name, with the title of earl, on Henry de Newburg, one of his fol- 
 lowers. The town of Warwick, capital of the county of the same name, is 011 the river Avon, 
 eighty-two miles north-west from London. (JILip No. XVI.) 
 
 2. Tewkesbury is on the river Avon, near its confluence with the Severn, thirty-three miles 
 south-west from Warwick, and ninety miles north-west from London. The field on which the 
 Oattle was fought, in the immediate vicinity of the town, is still called the " Bloody Meadow." 
 
 3. Richmond, which gave a title to the dukes of that name, is in the north of England, forty- 
 one miles north-west from York. Its castle was founded by the first earl of Richmond, who 
 received from William ,he Conqueror the forfeited csiates of the earl of Mercia, ai.U built 
 Richmond castle to pro'act his family and property. The title and property, after being 
 possessed by d'rfforec, persons allied to the blood royal, were at length vested in the crown by 
 the accession of Henry, earl of Richmond, to the throi \ with the title of Henry VII. (Map 
 
 .No. XVI.)
 
 CHAP. IL] MIDDLE AGES. 307 
 
 worth field, 1 Richard was defeated and s_ain (1485). The crown 
 which Richard wore in the action was immediately placed on the head 
 of the earl of Richmond, who was proclaimed king, with the title of 
 Henry VII. His marriage soon after with the princess Elizabeth, 
 heiress of the house of York, united the rival claims of York and 
 Lancaster in the Tudor family, and put an end to the civil contests 
 which, for more than half a century, had deluged England with blood. 
 
 20. The early part of the reign of Henry VII. was disturbed b 
 two singular enterprises, the attempt made in Ireland, 
 
 by Lambert Simnel, to counterfeit the person of the 
 young earl of Warwick, nephew of Edward IV., and the 
 only remaining male heir of the house of York ; and the similar 
 attempt of Perkin Warbeck to counterfeit the young duke of 
 York, one of the princes who had been murdered in the Tower at 
 the instigation of Richard III. Both impostors, claiming the right 
 to the throne, received their principal support in Ireland ; but the 
 former, after being crowned at Dublin, 2 and afterwards defeated in 
 battle, (1487,) ended his days as a menial in the king's household, 
 while the latter, after throwing himself upon the king's mercy, being 
 detected in subsequent plots, expiated his crime on the scaffold. 
 
 21. The most important of the foreign relations of Henry were 
 a treaty with France, which stipulated that no rebel subjects of 
 either power should be harbored or aided by the other ; and a treaty 
 of peace with Scotland, by which Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry, 
 was given in marriage to the Scottish king, James IV., a marriage 
 from which have sprung all the sovereigns who have reigned in Great 
 Britain since the time of Elizabeth The reply of Henry to his 
 counsellors who objected to the Scottish marriage, that the kingdom 
 of England might by that connection fall to the king of Scotland, 
 shows a great degree of sagacity, that has been verified by the result. 
 " Scotland would then," said Henry, " become an accession to Eng- 
 land, not England to Scotland, for the greater would draw the less: 
 it is a safer union for England than one with France." 
 
 22. The reign of Henry VII. may justly be considered an im- 
 portant era in English history. It began in revolution, at the close 
 
 1. Bosworth is a small town ninety-five miles north-west from London. In the battle-field, in 
 the vicinity of this town, is an eminence called Crown Hill, where Lord Stanley is said to have 
 placed Richard's crown on the earl of Richmond's head. (Map No. XVI.) 
 
 2. Ditblin, the capital of Ireland, is on the eastern sea-coast of the island, at l^e mouth of 
 the river Liffey, two hundred and ninety-two miles north-west from London. It was called 
 
 jy the Danes Divelin, or JJuIthlin, " the black pool," from its vicinity to the mu Idy swamps at 
 '.he mouth of the r, ; ver. It has a population of two hundred and fifty thousand. (J^aj. No. XV] )
 
 308 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II 
 
 of the long and bloody wars between the houses of York and Lan- 
 caster : it effected a change in descents : it marks the decline of the 
 feudal system, the waning power of the baronial aristocracy, and a 
 corresponding increase of royal prerogatives : it was cotemporary with 
 that greatest of events in Modern History, the discovery of Amer- 
 ica, with the advance in knowledge and civilization that dawned 
 upon the closing period of the Middle Ages ; with the consolidation 
 of the great European monarchies into nearly the shape and extent 
 which they retain at the present day ; and with the growth of the 
 " balance of power" system, which neutralized the efforts of princes at 
 universal dominion. A general survey of the condition of the prin- 
 cipal States of Europe at this period will better enable us to com- 
 prehend the relations of their subsequent history. 
 
 II. OTHER NATIONS AT THE CLOSE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 1. Of the States of Northern Europe Denmark, 1 Sweden, and Nor- 
 way, constituting the ancient Scandinavia, merit our 
 
 1. DENMARK, 
 
 SWEDEN, AND first attention. After these kingdoms had long been 
 
 NORWAY, agitated by internal dissensions, they were finally, by 
 
 the treaty of Calmar," (1397,) united into a single monarchy, near 
 
 1. Denmark embraces the whole of the peninsula north of Germany, early known as the 
 Cimbric Chersonese, and afterwards as Jutland. Its earliest known inhabitants were the Cimbri. 
 (See p. 171.) The famous but mysterious Odin, the Mars as well as the Mohammed of Scan- 
 dinavian history, is said to have emigrated, with a band of followers, from the banks of the 
 Tan' ais to Scandinavia about the middle of the first century before the Christian era, and to 
 have established his authority, and the Scythian religion, over Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. 
 Skiold, son of Odin, is said to have ruled over Denmark ; but his history, ami that of his pos- 
 terity for many generations, are involved in fable. Hengi#t and Horsa, the two Saxon chiefs 
 who conquered England in the fifth century, reckoned Odin, (or Wodin in their dialect,) as 
 their ancestor. Gorm the Old, son of Hardicanute I., (fforda-knut,) united all the Danish 
 States under his sceptre in the year 863. His grandson Sweyn, subdued a part of Norway in 
 the year 1000, and a part of England in 1014. His son Canute completed the conquest of Eng- 
 land in 10i6, and also subdued a part of Scotland. Canute embraced the Christian religion, 
 and introduced it into Denmark ; upon which a great change took place in the character of the 
 people. At his death, in 1036, he left the crowns of Denmark and England to his son Hardi- 
 cnnute IT. In 1385, Margaret, daughter of the Danish prince Walderaar, and wife of Hsquin 
 king of Norway, styled the Semir' amis of the North, ascended the throne of Norway and 
 Denmark. In 1389 she was chosen by the Swedes as their sovereign ; and in 1397 the treaty 
 of Calmar united the three crowns it was supposed forever. In 1448, the princes of the 
 family of Skiold having become extinct, the Danes promoted Christian I., count of Oldenburg, 
 to the throne. He was the founder of the royal Danish family which has ever since kept 
 possession of the throne. In 1523 the Swedes emancipated themselves from the cruel and 
 tyrannical yoke of Christian IT., king of Denmark. In their struggle for independence they 
 were led by the famous Gustavus Vasa, who was raised to the throne of Sweden by the unanU 
 mous suffrages of his fellow citizens. Norway remained connected with Denmark till 1314, 
 when the allied powers gave it to Sweden, as indemnity for Finland. (J\Iap No. XIV.) 
 
 2. Calmar, rendered famous by the treaty of 1397, is a seaport town on the small island of 
 Quarnholm, which is in the narrow strait that separates the island of Oland from the south- 
 eastern coast ol' Sweden. (Map No. XIV.)
 
 CHAT. II.] MIDDLE AGES. 309 
 
 the close of the fourteenth century, through the influence of Marga- 
 ret of Denmark, whose extraordinary talents and address have ren- 
 dered her name illustrious as the " Semir'amis of the North." But 
 the union of Calinar, although forming an important epoch in Scan- 
 dinavian history, was never firmly consolidated ; and after having 
 been renewed several times, was at length irreparably broken by 
 Sweden, which, in the early part of the sixteenth century, (1521,) 
 under the conduct of the heroic Gustavus Vasa, recovered its ancient 
 independence. 
 
 2. East and south east of the Scandinavian kingdoms were the 
 numerous Sclavonic tribes, which were gradually gathered into the 
 empire of Russia. The original cradle of that mighty 
 
 empire which dates back to the time of Rurick, a chief- IL RUSSIAN 
 
 _ r EMPIRE. 
 
 tain cotemporary with Alfred the Great, was a narrow 
 territory extending from Kiev, along the banks of the Dnieper, 1 north 
 to Novogorod." Darkness for a long time rested upon early Russian 
 history, but it has been in great part dispelled by the genius and re- 
 search of Karamsin, and it is now known that as early as the tenth 
 century the Russian empire had attained an extent and importance, 
 as great, comparatively, among the powers of Europe, as it boasts at 
 the present day. About the middle of the eleventh century the 
 system of dividing the kingdom among the children of successive 
 monarch's began to prevail, and the result was ruinous in the ex- 
 treme, occasioning innumerable intestine wars, and a gradual decline 
 of the strength and consideration of the empire. 
 
 3. Toward the middle of the thirteenth century the Tartar hordes 
 of Northern Asia, falling upon the feeble and disunited Russian 
 States, found them an easy prey ; and during a period of two hun- 
 dred and fifty years, Russia, under the Tartar yoke, suffered the 
 direst atrocities of savage cruelty and despotism. At length, about 
 the year 1480, John III., duke of Moscow, the true restorer of his 
 
 1. Dnieper, the Borysthenes of the ancients, still frequently called by its ancient name, is a 
 large river of European Russia. It rises near Smolensko, runs south, and falls into the Black 
 Sea, north-east of the mouths of the Danube. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Jfovogorod, or Novgorod, called also Veliki, or " the Great," formerly the most important 
 city in the Russian empire, is situated on the river Volkhof, near its exit from Lake I linen, 
 one hundred miles south-east from St. Petersburg!!, and three hundred and five north-west 
 fironi Moscow. The Volkhof runs north to Lake Ladoga. So impregnable - vas N vgorod 
 once deemed as to give rise to the proverb, 
 
 Qui's contra Dcos et magnum Novogordiam ? 
 "Who can resist the Gods and Great Novgorod';" 
 From Novgorod to Kiev is a distance of nearly six nundred miles.
 
 310 MODERN HISTORY. [FAIT IL 
 
 country's glory, succeeded in abolishing the ruinous system by which 
 the regal power had been frittered away, while at the same time he 
 threw off the yoke of the Moguls, and repulsed their last invasion 
 of his country. Under the reign of this wise and powerful prince, 
 the many petty principalities which had long divided the sovereignty 
 were consolidated, and, at the end of the century, Russia, although 
 scarcely emerged from its primitive barbarian darkness, was one ol 
 the great powers of Europe. 
 
 4. South of the country inhabited by the Russians, we look in 
 
 vain, at the close of the fifteenth century, for the' once 
 "'EMPIKE AN ^ ame( ^ Greek empire of Justinian, or, as sometimes called, 
 
 the Eastern empire of the Romans. The account which 
 we have given of the crusades represents the Turks, a race of Tartar 
 origin, as spread over the greater part of Asia Minor. About the 
 beginning of the fourteenth century, a Turkish emir, a called Otto- 
 man, succeeded in uniting several of the petty Turkish States of the 
 peninsula, and thus laid the foundation of the Ottoman empire. 
 About the year 1358 the Ottoman Turks first obtained a foothold in 
 Europe ; and at the close of the fourteenth century their empire ex- 
 tended from the Euphrates to the Danube, and embraced, or held as 
 tributary, ancient Greece, Thes' saly, Macedonia, and Thrace, while 
 the Roman world was contracted to the city of Constantinople, and 
 even that was besieged by the Turks, and closely pressed by the ca- 
 lamities of war and famine. The city would have yielded fo the 
 efforts of Bajazet, the Turkish sultan ; but almost in the moment of 
 victory the latter was overthrown by the famous Timour, or Tamer- 
 lane, the new Tartar conqueror of Asia. 
 
 5. About the year 1370, Tamerlane, a remote descendant of the 
 Great Gengis Khan, (p. 286,) had fixed the capital of his new do- 
 minions at Samarcand, 1 from which central point of his power he 
 
 1. Samaicand, anciently called Marakanda, now a city of Independent Tartary, in Bokhara, 
 was the capital of the Persian satrapy of Sogdiana. (See Map No. IV.) Alexander is thought 
 to have pillaged it. It was taken from the sultan Mahomet, by Gengis Khan, in 1220 ; and 
 under Timo;v or Tamerlane, it became the capital of one of the largest empires in the world, 
 and the cen.-.^ of Asiatic learning and civilization, at the same time that it rose to high dis- 
 tinction oi account of its extensive commerce with all parts cf Asia. Samarcand is now in a 
 
 a. Emir, an Arabic word, meaning a leader, or commandei, was a tide first given to the 
 caliphs; but when they assumed the title of sultan, that of em r was applied to their children. 
 At length it was bestowed upon all who were thought to be descendants 3f Mahomet in the 
 lino of his daughter Fatimah.
 
 CHAP. EL] MIDDLE AGES. 311 
 
 made thii ty-five victorio as campaigns, conquering all Persia, North- 
 ern Asia, and Hindostan. and before his death he had Iy TAETA 
 placed the crowns of twenty-seven kingdoms on his EMPIRE or 
 head. In the year 1402 he fought a bloody and decisive TAJIERLANE - 
 battle with the Turkish sultan Bajazet, on the plains of Angora, 1 in 
 Asia Minor, in which the Turk sustained a total defeat, and fell into 
 the hands of the conqueror. Tamerlane would have carried his 
 conquests into Europe ; but the lord of myriads of Tartar horsemen 
 was not master of a single galley ; and the two passages of the Bos- 
 porus and the Hellespont were guarded, the one by the Christians, 
 the other by the Turks, who on this occasion forgot their animosities 
 to act with union and firmness in the common cause. Two years 
 later Tamerlane died, at the age of sixty-nine, while on his march 
 for the invasion of China 
 
 6. The Ottoman empire not only soon recovered from the blow 
 which Tamerlane had inflicted upon it, but in the year 1453, during 
 the reign of Mahomet II., effected the final conquest of Constanti- 
 nople. On the 29th of May of that year the city was carried by 
 assault, and given up to the unrestrained pillage of the Turkish 
 soldiers : the last of the Greek emperors fell in the first onset : the 
 inhabitants were carried into slavery ; and Constantinople was left 
 without a prince or a people, until the sultan established his own 
 residence, and that of his successors, on the commanding spot which 
 had been chosen by Constantine. The few remnants of the Greek 
 or Roman power were soon merged in the Ottoman dominion ; and 
 at the close of the fifteenth century the Turkish empire was firmly 
 established in Europe. 
 
 7. While at the close of the fifteenth century the three Scandina- 
 vian kingdoms of the North, and Russia, formed, as it 
 
 , ill- , -,1.1 v - POLAND. 
 
 were, separate worlds, having no connection with the 
 
 rest of Europe, Poland, 2 the ancient Sarmatia, supplying the connect- 
 
 decayed condition : gardens, fields, and plantations, occupy the place of its numerous streets 
 and mosques ; and we search in vain for its ancient palaces, whose beauty is so highly eulo- 
 gized by Arab historians. 
 
 1. Angora, a town of Natolia in Asia Minor, (see Note, Roum, p. 281,) is the same as the 
 ancient Ancyra, which, in the time of Nero, was the capital of Galatia. Here St. Paul preached 
 to the Galatians. 
 
 2. The Poles were a Sclavonic tribe (a branch of the Sarmatians), who, in the seventh cen 
 Jury, passed up the Dnieper, and thence to the Niemen and the Vistula. About the middle of 
 the tenth century they embraced Christianity, and toward the end of the same century were 
 first called Poles, that is, Sdavonians of the plain. The numerous principalities into which
 
 3i2 MODERN HISTORY [PART 1L 
 
 ing link between the Sclavonian and German tribes, had risen to a 
 considerable degree of eminence and power. The history of Poland 
 commences with the tenth century ; but the prosperity of the king- 
 dom began with the reign of Casirnir the Great. (1333-1370.) In 
 the year 1386 Lithuania 1 was added to Poland ; and about the mid- 
 dle of the following century the Polish sovereign, Wladislas, was 
 presented with the crown of Hungary, which he had nobly defended 
 against the Turks. But Hungary soon reverted again to the German 
 empire. After long wars with the Teutonic knights, 2 who, since the 
 crusades, had firmly established their order in the Prussian part of 
 the Germanic empire, the knights were everywhere defeated during 
 the reign of Casiniir IV., (1444-1492,) who added a large part of 
 Prussia to the Polish territories. The Turkish province of Mol- 
 davia 3 also became tributary to Poland ; and at the close of the fif- 
 teenth century this kingdom had extended its power from the Baltic 
 to the Euxine, along the whole frontier of European civilization, 
 thus forming an effectual barrier to the Western States of Europe 
 against barbarian invasion. 
 
 8. The German empire, at the close of the fifteenth century, com- 
 prised a great number of States lying between France and Poland, 
 extending even west of the Rhine, and embracing the whole of cen- 
 
 the Poles were divided were first united into one kingdom in 1025, under king Boleslaus I. ; 
 but Poland was afterwards subdivided among the family of the Piasts until 1305, when Wladis- 
 las, king of Cracow, united with hiss overeignty the two principal remaining divisions, Great 
 and Little Poland. From 1370 to 1382 Hungary was united with Poland. The union with 
 Lithuania in 1386, occasioned by the marriage of the grand duke of Lithuania with the queen 
 of Poland, was more permanent. After the Lithuania nobility, in 1569, united with Great and 
 Little Poland, in one diet, Poland became the most powerful State in the North. Although Po- 
 land has ceased to constitute an Independent and single State Its detached fragments having 
 become Austrian, Prussian, or Russian provinces still the country is distinctly separated from 
 those which surround it, by national character, language, and manners. The present Poland 
 possessing the name without the privileges of a kingdom, and reduced to a territory extending 
 two hundred miles north and south, and two hundred east and west, is, substantially, a part of 
 the Russian empire. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 1. The greater part of Lithuania, once forming the north-eastern d vision of Poland, ha* 
 )<een united to Russia. It is comprised in the present governments of Mohilew, Witepsk, 
 JHnsk, Wilna, and Grodno. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. The Teutonic Knights composed a religions order founded in 1190 by Frederic, duke of 
 Snabia, during a crusade in the Holy Land, and intended to be confined to Germans of noble 
 rank. The original object of the association was to defend the Christian religion against the 
 infidels, and to take care of the sick in the Holy Land. By degrees the order made several 
 conquests, and acquired great riches ; and at the beginning of the fifteenth century it possessed 
 a large extent of territory extending from the Oder to the Gulf of Finland. The war with 
 the Poles greatly abridged its power, and finally the order was abolished by Napoleon, in the 
 war with Austria, April 24th, 1809. 
 
 3. Moldavia, nominally a Turkish province, but in reality under the protection of Russia, 
 embraces the north-eastern part of the ancient Dacia. (Maps Nos. IX. and XVII.)
 
 CHAP, IL] MIDDLE AGES. 313 
 
 tral Europe. The Carlovingian sovereigns of Germany were hered- 
 itary monarchs ; but as early as the year 887 the great 
 vassals of the crown deposed their emperor, and elected VI ' 
 
 A A KMi IIvE. 
 
 another sovereign, and from that remote period the em- 
 perors of Germany have continued to be elective. 
 
 9. Owing to the great number of the Germanic States, which were 
 of different grades, from large principalities down to free cities and 
 the estates of earls or counts the frequent changes of territory 
 among them, by marriages, alliances, and conquests, the weakness 
 of the federal tie by which they were united and their conflicting 
 interests, and frequent wars with each other and with the emperor, 
 the history of Germany is exceedingly complicated, and generally 
 devoid of great points of interest. Many of the States had their 
 own sovereigns, subordinate to their common emperor. About the 
 middle of the fourteenth century there were three powerful States in 
 Germany, which had absorbed nearly all the rest. These were 1st, 
 Luxemburg^ which possessed Bohemia, 8 Moravia, 3 and part of Si- 
 lesia, 4 and Lusatia : 6 2d, Bavaria, which had acquired Brandenburg," 
 Holland, 7 and the Tyrol : 8 and 3d, Austria* which, in addition to a 
 
 1. The Grand Duchy of Luxemburg was divided in the year 1839, between Holland and Bel- 
 gium. The town of Luxemburg, one hundred and eighty-five miles north-east from Paris, 
 containing one of the strongest fortresses in Europe, belongs, with a portion of the surround- 
 ing country, to Holland. {Map No. XV.) 
 
 2. Bohemia, having Silesia and Saxony on the north, Moravia and the arch-duchy of Austria 
 on the south-east, and Bavaria on the west, forms an important portion of the Austrian empire. 
 (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. Moravia, an important province of Austria, lies east of Bohemia. In 1733 a portion of 
 Silesia was incorporated with it. Moravia is the country anciently occupied by the Quadi and 
 Marcomanni, who waged fierce wars against the Romans. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 4. Silesia is north-east of Bohemia and Moravia, embracing the country on both sides of the 
 Oder. (Map No XVII.) 
 
 5. Lusatia was a tract of country having Brandenburg on the north. Silesia on the east, Bo- 
 hemia and Bavaria on the south, and Meissen on the west. It is now embraced in the east- 
 ern part of the kingdom of Saxony, east of Dresden, the southern part of Brandenburg, and 
 the north-western part of Silesia. It was divided into Upper and Lower Lusatia, the former 
 being the southern portion of the territory. (Map No. XVIL) 
 
 6. Brandenburg, the most important of the Prussian States, lies between Mecklenburg and 
 Pomerania on the north, and West Prussian Saxony and the kingdom of Saxony on the south. 
 *t includes Berlin, the capital of the Prussian empire. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 7. Holland has the Prussian German States on the south-east, Belgium on the south, and 
 the sea on the west. (Maps Nos. XV. and XVII.) 
 
 6. The Tyrol, (comprising the ancient Rhoetia with a part of Noricum, see Map No. IX.,) 
 is a province of the Austrian empire, east of Switzerlard, and having Bavaria on the north, 
 and Lombardy on the south. The Tyrolese, although warmly attached to liberty, have always 
 been steadfast adherents of Austria. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 9. The arch-duchy of Austria, the nucleus and centre of the Austrian empire 1 , lies on both 
 sides of the Danube, having Bohemia and Moravia on the north, and Slyria and Carinthla on 
 the south. In the time of Charlemagne, about the yet.r 800, the margravate of Austria was 
 
 O
 
 314 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET IL 
 
 large number of hereditary States, possessed much of the Suabian 
 territory. (See Suabia, p. 270.) 
 
 10. In the year 1438 the German princes elected an emperor from 
 the house of Austria ; and, ever since, an Austrian prince, with 
 scarcely any intermission, has occupied the throne of Germany. 
 Near the close of the fifteenth century the German States, then 
 under the reign of Maximilian of the house of Austria, made an im- 
 portant change in their condition, by which the private wars and 
 feuds, which the laws then authorized, and the right to carry on 
 which against each other the petty States regarded as the bulwark 
 of their liberty, were made to give place to regular courts of justice 
 for the settlement of national controversies. In the year 1495, at a 
 general diet held at Worms, 1 the plan of a Perpetual Public Peace 
 was subscribed to by the several States : oppression, rapine, and vio- 
 lence, were made to yield to the authority of law, and the public 
 tranquillity was thus, for the first time in Germany, established on a 
 firm basis. 
 
 11. For a considerable period previous to the beginning of the 
 
 fourteenth century, Switzerland, the Helvetia of the Ro- 
 ZERT.AND. mans ) na( l formed an integral part of the Germanic em- 
 pire; but in the year 1307 the house of Austria, under 
 che usurping emperor Albert, endeavored to extend his sway over the 
 rude mountaineers of that inhospitable land. The tyranny of Aus- 
 tria provoked the league of Rutuli ;" the famous episode of the hero 
 William Tell 3 gave a new impulse to the cause of freedom ; and in 
 
 formed south of the Danube, by a body of militia which protected the south-east of Germany 
 from the incursions of the Asiatic tribes. In 1156 its territory was extended north of the Dan- 
 ube, and made a duchy. In 1438 the ruling dynasty of Austria obtained the electoral crowu 
 of the German emperors, and in 1453 Austria was raised to an arch-duchy. In 1526 it acquired 
 Bohemia and Hungary, and attained the rank of a European monarchy. ( Map No. XVII.) 
 
 1. Worms is on the west bank of the Rhine, forty-two miles south-west from Frankfort. 
 (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Rutuli was a meadow slope under the Salzburg mountain, in the canton of Uri, and on 
 the west bank of the Lake of Lucerne, where the confederates were wont to assemble at dead 
 of night, to consult for the salvation of their country. (Map No. XIV.) 
 
 3. The story of William Tell, one of the confederates of Rutuli, is, briefly, as follows. Ges- 
 ler the Austrian governor had carried his insolence so far as to cause his hat to be placed 
 upon a pole, as a symbol of the sovereign power of Austria, and to order that all who passed 
 should uncover their heads and bow before it. Tell, having passed the hat without making 
 obeisance, was summoned before Gessler, who, knowing that he was a good archer, command- 
 ed him to shoot, from a great distance, an apple placed on the head of his own son, promis- 
 ing him his life if he succeeded. Tell hit the apple, but, accidentally dropping a concealed 
 arrow, was asked by the tyrant why he had brought two arrows with him ? " Had I shot my 
 child," replied the archer, " the second shaft was for thee : and, I e sure, I should n?t have
 
 CHAP. II] MIDDLE AGES. 315 
 
 the year 1308 the united cantons of ITri, Schwytz, and Unterwalden, 1 
 BtrucK their first blow for liberty, and expelled their oppressors from 
 the country. In 1315 the Swiss gained a great victory over the 
 Austrians at Morgarten, 2 and another at Sempach 3 in 1386 ; but they 
 were regarded as belonging to the Germanic empire until about the 
 close of the fifteenth century, when, in the famous Suabian war, army 
 after army of the Austrians was defeated, and the emperor Maxi- 
 milian himself compelled to effect a disgraceful retreat. This was 
 the last war of the early Swiss confederates in the cause of freedom ; 
 and the peace concluded with Maximilian in 1499 established the 
 independence of Switzerland. 
 
 1'2. The condition of Italy during the central period of the Mid- 
 dle Ages 'has already been described. (Sec II.) At the close of 
 that period Italy still formed, nominally, a part of the 
 Germanic empire ; but the authority of the German em- 
 perors had silently declined during the preceding cen- 
 turies, until at length it was reduced to the mere ceremony of coro 
 nation, and the exercise of a few honorary and feudal rights over the 
 Lombard vassals of the crown. In the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 
 turies, numerous republics had sprung up in Italy ; .and, animated 
 by the spirit of liberty, they for a time enjoyed an unusual degree 
 of prosperity ; but eventually, torn to pieces by contending factions, 
 and a prey to mutual and incessant hostilities, they fell under the 
 tyranny of one despot after another, until, in the early part of the 
 fifteenth century, Florence, Genoa, 4 and Venice, were the only im- 
 
 missed my mark a second time.*' Gessler, in a rage not unmixed with terror, declared tha 
 although he had promised Tell his life, he should pass it in a dungeon ; and taking his captive 
 bound, started in a boat to cross the Lake of Lucerne, to his fortress. But a violent storm 
 wising, Tell was set at liberly, and the helm committed to his hands. He guided the boat suc- 
 cessfully to the shore, when, seizing his bow, by a daring leap he sprung upon a rock, leaving 
 ihe barque to wrestle with the billows. Gessler escaped the storm, but only to fall by the un- 
 erring arrow of Tell. The death of Gessler was a signal for a general rising of the Swiss cantons. 
 
 1. Uri, Schwytz, Unterwalden, see Map No. XIV. 
 
 2. Morgarten, the narrow pass in which the battle was fought, is on the eastern shore of the 
 wnall Lake of Egeri, in the canton of Schwytz, seventeen miles east from Lucerne. (Map 
 No. XIV.) 
 
 3. Sempach is a small town on the east bank of the small lake of the same name, seven miles 
 northwest from Lucerne. (Map No. XIV.) 
 
 4. Genoa, a maritime city of northern Italy, is at the head of the gulf of the same name, 
 OTenty-five miles south-east from Turin. After the downfall of the empire of Charlemagne, 
 Genoa erected itself into a republic. In 1174 it possessed an extensive territory in north-west- 
 ern Italy, nearly all of Provence, and the island of Corsica. Genoa carried on long wars with 
 "isa and Venice, that with the latter being one of the most memorable in the Italian annals of 
 the Middle Ages.
 
 316 MODERN HISTORY. [PAar IL 
 
 portant States that had escaped the general catastrophe. Nearly all 
 the numerous free towns and republics of Lombardy had been con- 
 quered by the duchy of Milan, which acknowledged a direct de- 
 pendence on the German emperor. 
 
 13. The Florentines, who greatly enriched themselves by their 
 commerce and manufactures, maintained their republican form of 
 government, from about the close of the twelfth century, during a 
 period of nearly two hundred and fifty years. The Genoese and Ve- 
 netians, whose commercial interests thwarted each other, both in the 
 Levant 1 and the Mediterranean, quarreled repeatedly; but eventu- 
 ally the Venetians gained the superiority, and retained the command 
 of the sea in their own hands. Of all the Italian republics, Genoa 
 was the most agitated by internal dissensions ; and the Genoese, vol- 
 atile and inconstant, underwent frequent voluntary changes of mas- 
 ters. At the close of the fifteenth century Genoa was a dependency 
 of the duchy of Milan, although subsequently it recovered once more 
 its ancient state of independence. 
 
 14. Venice, to whose origin we have already alluded, was the 
 earliest, and, for a long time, the most considerable, commercial city 
 of modern Europe. At a very early period the Venetians began to 
 trade with Constantinople and other eastern cities ; the crusades, to 
 which their shipping contributed, increased their wealth, and extend- 
 ed their commerce and possessions ; and toward the end of the fif- 
 teenth century, besides several rich provinces in Lombardy, the re- 
 public was mistress of Crete and Cyprus, of the greater part of the 
 Morea, 2 or Southern Greece, and of most of the isles in the ^Egean 
 Sea. The additional powers that at this time shared the dominion 
 of Italy, were the popes, and the kings of Naples ; but the temporal 
 domains of the former were small, and those of the latter soon passed 
 into other hands ; for the continual wars which all the Italian States 
 waged with each other had already encouraged foreign powers to 
 form plans of conquest over them. In the year 1500 Ferdinand of 
 Spain deprived France of Naples ; and from this time the Spaniards, 
 who were already masters of Sicily and Sardinia, became, for more 
 than a hundred years, the predominating power in Italy. 
 
 1 , The Levant is a term applied to designate the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean, from 
 southern Greece to, Egypt. In the Middle Ages the trade with these countries was almost 
 exclusively in the hands of the Italians, who gave to them the general appellation of levants, 
 or eastern countries. (Italian, Levante : French, Levant.) 
 
 2. Morea. the ancient Peloponnesus, or southern Greece, is said to derive Us modern name 
 from its resemnhutf.) to a mulberry leaf. (Greek, morea, a mulberry tree.)
 
 CHAP. II] MIDDLE AGES. 317 
 
 15. Turning 1o Spain, we behold there, in the beginning of the 
 fifteenth century, the three Christian States of Navarre, 1 
 Aragon, a Castile 3 and Leon 4 united, and the Moorish 
 kingdom of Granada. 5 Frequent dissensions among the Christian 
 States had long prevented unity of action among them, but in the 
 year 1474 Ferdinand V. ascended the throne of Aragon ; and, as 
 he had previously married Isabella, a princess of Castile, the two 
 most powerful Christian States were thus united. The plan of ex- 
 pelling the Moors from Spain had long been agitated; and in 1481 
 the war for that purpose was commenced by Ferdinand and Isabella. 
 Ten years, however, were spent in the sanguinary strife, before the 
 
 1. Navarre is In the northern part of Spain, having France and the Pyrenees on the uorth, 
 Aragon on the east, Old Castile on the south, and the Basque provinces (Biscay, Guipuzcoa, 
 and Alava) on the west. A portion of ancient Navarre extended north of the Pyrenees, and 
 afterwards formed the French province of Beam. (See Map No. XIII.) During many cen- 
 turies Navarre was an independent kingdom, but in 1284 it became united, by intermarriage, 
 with that of France. In 1320 it again obtained a sovereign of its own. Although still claimed 
 by France, in 1512 Ferdinand of Aragon united all the country south of the Pyrenees to the 
 crown of Spain. In 1590 Henry IV., grandson of Henry kiug of Navarre, ascended the throne 
 of France ; and from that time to the reign of Charles X., the French monarch*, (with the ex- 
 seption of Napoleon,) assumed the title of "king of France and Navarre ;" but only the small 
 portion of Navarre north of the Pyrenees remained annexed to the French monarchy. Span- 
 ish Navarre is still governed by its separate laws, and has, nominally at least, the same con- 
 stitution which it enjoyed when it was a separate monarchy ; but its sovereignty is vested in 
 fie Spanish crown. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. Aragon was bounded on the north by the Pyrenees, east by Catalonia, south by Valencia, 
 and west by Castile and Navarre. While a separate kingdom it was the most powerful of the 
 peninsular States, and comprised, in 1479, under the sovereignty of Ferdinand, exclusive of 
 Aragon proper, Navarre, Catalonia, Valencia, and Sardinia. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 3. Castile is the central and largest division of modern Spain. The northern portion being 
 that first recovered from the Saracens, is called Old Castile, and comprises the modern prov- 
 inces of Burgos, Sorb, Segovia, and Avila : the southern portion, called New Castile, comprises 
 the provinces of Madrid, Guadalaxara, Cuenca, Toledo, and La Mancha. After the expulsion 
 of the Saracens, and various vicissitudes, the sovereignty of Castile was vested by marriage in 
 Sancho III. king of Navarre, whose son Ferdinand was made king of Castile in 1034. Three 
 years later he' was crowned king of Leon. The crowns of Castile and Leon were repeatedly 
 separated and united, till, by the marriage of Isabella, who held both crowns, with Ferdinant\, 
 king of Aragon, in 1497, the three kingdoms were consolidated into one. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 4. The kingdom of Leon was bounded north by Asturias, east by Old Castile, south by Es- 
 tremadura, and west by Galicia and Portugal. During the eighth century, this district, after 
 the expulsion of the Moors, was formed into a kingdom, called after its capital, and connected 
 with Ast-irtas. It was first added to Castile in 1037, in the reign of Ferdinand I. king of Cas- 
 tile, who was king of Leon in right of his wife ; but it continued in an unsettled state till 1230, 
 when it was finally united, by inheritance, to the dominions of Ferdinand III. king of Castile. 
 (Map No. XIII ) " 
 
 5. Granada, consisting of the south-eastern part of ancient Andalusia, (Note p. 232,) is on 
 the Mediterranean coast, in the south-eastern part of Spain. On the breaking up of the Afri- 
 can empire in Spain, in the year 1238, Mohammed ben Alhamar founded the Moorish king- 
 dom of Granada, making the city of Granada his capital. Granada remained in the possession 
 of the Moors two hundred and fifty years, which comprise the season of its prosperity. In 
 1492 it surrendered to Ferdinand the Catholic, being the last foothold of Saracen power in 
 Spain, (Map No. XIII.)
 
 818 MODERN HISTORY. [?AKT IL 
 
 Christians were enabbd to besiege Granada, the Moorish capital; 
 but the capitulation of that city in January, 1492, put an end to the 
 Saracen dominion in the Spanish peninsula, after it had existed there 
 during a period of eight hundred years. In the year 1512 Ferdi- 
 nand invaded and conquered Navarre ; and thus the whole of Spain 
 was united under the same government. 
 
 1G. Toward the close of the eleventh century, the frontier province 
 
 of Portugal, 1 which had been conquered by the Chris- 
 
 xi. FOE- t j rom ^e jyj oors was f orme d into an earldom 
 
 TUOAL. ' 
 
 tributary to Leon and Castile ; but in the twelfth cen- 
 tui Y it was erected into an independent kingdom, and in the early 
 pait of the thirteenth it had reached its present limits. The history 
 of Portugal is devoid of general interest, until the period of those 
 voyages and discoveries of which the Portuguese were the early pro- 
 moters, and which have shed immortal lustre on the Portuguese name. 
 
 III. DISCOVERIES. 1. A brief account of the discoveries of the 
 fifteenth century will close the present chapter. From the subver- 
 sion of the Roman empire, until the revival of letters which succeed- 
 ed the Dark Ages, no advance was made in the art of navigation; 
 and even the little geographical knowledge that had been acquired 
 
 1. Portugal, anciently called Lusitania, (Note p. 160,) was taken possession of by the Ro- 
 mans about two hundred years before the Christian era ; previously to which the Phoenicians, 
 Carthaginians, anil Greeks, traded to its shores, and probably planted colonies there. In the fifth 
 century it was inundated by the Germanic tribes, and in 712 was conquered by the Saracens 
 Soon after, the Spaniards of Castile and Leon, aided by the native inhabitants, wrested north- 
 ern Portugal, between the Minho and the Douro, from the Moors, and placed counts or govern- 
 ors over this region. About the close of the eleventh century Henry, a Burgundian prince, 
 came into Spain to seek his fortune by his sword, in the wars against the Moors. Alphouso 
 VI. king of Castile and Leon, gave to the chivalric stranger the hand of his daughter in mar- 
 riage, and also the earldom of the Christian provinces of Portugal. In 1139 the Portuguese 
 earl, Alphonso I., having gained a brilliant victory over the Moors, his soldiers proclaimed him 
 king on the field of battle ; and Portugal became an independent kingdom. Its power now 
 rapidly increased : It maintained its independence against the claims of Castile and Leon ; and 
 Alphonso extended his dominions to the borders of Algarve, in tne south. In 1249 Alphonso 
 III. conquered Algarve, and thus, in the final overthrow of the Moorish power In Portugal, ex- 
 tended the kingdom to its present limits* 
 
 The language of Portugal ia merely a dialect of the Spanish ; but the two people regard 
 each other with a deep-rooted national antipathy. The character attributed to the Portuguese 
 is not very flattering. " Strip a Spaniard of all his virtues, and you make a good Portuguese 
 of him," says the Spanish proverb. " I have heard it more truly said," says Dr. Southey, 
 "add hypocrisy to a Spaniard's vices, and you have the Portuguese character. The two na- 
 tions differ, perhaps purposely, in many of their habits. Almost every man in Spain smokes; 
 the Portuguese never smoke, but most of them take snuff. None of the Spaniards will use v 
 wheelbarrow : none of the Portuguese will carry a burden : the one says, ' it is only fit for beasU 
 to draw carriages ;' the other, that it is fit only for beasts to curry burdens. 1 " (Map No. XIIL)
 
 CHAP. II] MIDDLE AGES. 319 
 
 was nearly lost during that gloomy period. Upon the returning 
 dawn of civilization, however, commerce again revived ; and the 
 Italian States, of which Venice, Pisa, 1 and Genoa, took the lead, 
 soon became distinguished for their enterprising commercial spirit. 
 The discovery of the magnetic needle gave a new impulse to naviga- 
 tion, as it enabled the mariner to direct his bark with increased bold- 
 ness and confidence farther from the coast, out of sight of whose 
 landmarks he before seldom dared venture ; while the invention of 
 the art of printing disseminated more widely the knowledge of new 
 discoveries in geography and navigation. In the fourteenth century 
 the Canary 2 islands, believed to be the Fortunate islands of the 
 ancients, were accidentally rediscovered by the crew of a French 
 ship driven thither by a storm. But the career of modern discovery 
 was prosecuted with the greatest ardor by the Portuguese. Under 
 the patronage of prince Henry, son of king John the first, Cape 
 Bojador, before considered an impassable limit on the African coast, 
 was doubled ; the Cape de Verd 3 and Azore 4 islands were discovered 
 and the greatest part of the African coast, from Cape Blanco to 
 Cape de Verd, was explored. (1419 1430.) 
 
 2. The grand idea which actuated prince Henry, was, by circum- 
 navigating Africa, to open an easier and less expensive route to the 
 Indies, and thus to deprive the Italians of the commerce of those 
 fertile regions, and turn it at once upon his own country. Although 
 prince Henry died before he had accomplished the great object of 
 his ambition, the fame of the discoveries patronized by him had 
 rendered his name illustrious, and the learned, the curious, and the 
 
 1. Pisa, the capital of one of the most celebrated republics of Italy, and now the capital of 
 the province of its own name in the grand duchy of Tuscany, is on the river Arno, about 
 eight miles from its entrance into the .Mediterranean, and thirteen miles north-east from Leg- 
 horn. In the tenth century Pisa took the lead among the commercial republics of Italy, and 
 in the eleventh century its fleet of galleys maintained a superiority in the Mediterranean. In 
 the thirteenth century a struggle with Genoa commenced, which, after many vicissitudes, ended 
 in the total ruin of the Pisans. Pisa subsequently became the prey of various petty tyrants, 
 and was finally united to Florence in 1406. 
 
 2. The Candries are a group of fourteen islands belonging to Spain. The peak of Teneriffe, 
 a half extinct volcano, on one of the more distant islands, is about two hundred and fifty miles 
 from the north-west coast of Africa, and eight hundred miles south-west from the straits of 
 Gibraltar. 
 
 3. The Cape de Verd islands, belonging to Portugal, are off the west coast of Africa, abeut 
 three hundred and twenty miles west from Cape de Verd. 
 
 4. The JtTores (az-5res') are about eight hundred miles west from Portugal. The name is 
 said to be derived from the vast number of hawks', (called by the Portuguese afar,) by which 
 thw were frequented. At the time of their discovery they wero uninhabited, aiM 1 . covered with 
 forest and underwood.
 
 320 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 adventurous, repaired to Lisbon 1 to increase their knowledge by the 
 discoveries of the Portuguese, and to join in their enterprises, Among 
 them Christopher Columbus, a native of Genoa, arrived there about 
 the year 1470. He had already made himself familiar with the 
 navigation of the Mediterranean, and had visited Iceland ; a and he 
 now accompanied the Portuguese in their expeditions to the coast of 
 Guinea* and the African islands. But while others were seeking a 
 passage to India by the slow and tedious process of sailing around 
 the southern extremity of Africa, the bold and daring mind of Co- 
 lumbus conceived the project of reaching the desired land by a west- 
 ern route, directly across the Atlantic. The spherical figure of the 
 earth was then known, and Columbus doubted not that our globe 
 might be circumnavigated. 
 
 3. Of the gradual maturing and development of the theory of Co- 
 lumbus, of the poverty and toil which he endured, and the ridicule 
 humiliation, and disappointments which he encountered, as he wan- 
 dered from court to court, soliciting the patronage which ignorance ; 
 bigotry, prejudice, and pedantic pride, so long denied him, and of his 
 final triumph, in the discovery of a new continent, equal to the old 
 world in magnitude, and separated by vast oceans from all the earth 
 before known to civilized man, our limits forbid us to enter into 
 details, and it would likewise be superfluous, as these events have al- 
 ready been familiarized to American readers by the chaste and glow- 
 ing narrative of tneir countryman Irving. In the year 1492, the 
 genius of Columbus, more than realizing the dreams of Plato's 
 famous Atlantis,* revealed to the civilized world another hemisphere, 
 
 1. Lisbon, the capital and principal seaport of Portugal, is situated on the right bank, and 
 near the mouth, of the Tagus. The Moors captured the city in the year 71(5, and, with some 
 slight exceptions, it remained in their power till, in 1145, Alphonso I. made it the capital of 
 his kingdom. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. Iceland is a largo island in the Northern Ocean, on the confines of the polar circle. It 
 was discovered by a Norwegian pirate in the year 851, and was soon after settled by Nc rwe- 
 gians. In the year 928 the inhabitants formed themselves into a republic, which existed nearly 
 four hundred years ; after which Iceland again became subject to Norway. On the annexation 
 of that kingdom to Denmark, Iceland was transferred with it. 
 
 3. Guinea is a name applied by European geographers to designate that portion of the Afii 
 can coast extending from about eleven degrees north of the equator, to seventeen degreei 
 south. 
 
 4. Atlantis was a celebrated island supposed to have existed at a very early period in the 
 Atlantic Ocean, and to have been, eventually, sunk beneath its waves. Plato is the first who 
 gives an account of it, and he obtained his information from the priests of Egypt. The state- 
 ment which he furnishes is substantially as follows : 
 
 tt In the Atlantic Ocean, over against the pillars of Hercules, lay a very large and fertile 
 island, whose surface was variegated by mountains and valleys, its coasts indented with many 
 nariijable rivers, and Us fields well cultivated. In its vicinity were ether islands from which
 
 OHAI-. ILJ MIDDLE AGES. 321 
 
 and first opened a communication between Europe and America thai 
 will never cease while the waters of the ocean continue to roll be- 
 tween them. Five years after the discovery of America, Vasco do 
 Gama, a Portuguese admiral, doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and 
 had the glory of carrying his national flag as far as India. These 
 were the closing maritime enterprises of the fifteenth century : they 
 opened to the Old World new scenes of human existence : new na- 
 tions, new races, and new continents, rapidly crowded upon the 
 vision ; and imagination tired in contemplating the future wonders 
 that the genius of discovery was about to develop. 
 
 there was a passage to a large continent lying beyond. The island of Atlantis was thickly set- 
 tled and very powerful : its kings extended their sway over Africa as far as Egypt, and over 
 Europe until they were checked by the Athenians, who, opposing themselves to the invaders, 
 became the conquerors. But at length that Atlantic island, by a flood and earthquake, was 
 suddenly destroyed, &nd for a long time afterwards the sea thereabouts was full of rocks and 
 shoals." 
 
 A dispute arose among the ancient philosophers whether Plato's s'atement was based upon 
 reality, or was a mere crealion of fancy. Posidonius thought it worthy of belief: Pliny re- 
 mains undecided. Among modern writers. Rudbeck labors to prove (hat Sweden was the 
 Atlantis of the ancients: Bailly places it in the farthest regions of the north, believing that the 
 Atiantides were the far-fumed Hyperboreans ; while others connect America, with its Mexican 
 and Peruvian remains of a remote civilization, with the legend of the lost Atlantis. In con- 
 nection with this view they point to the peculiar conformation of our continent along the 
 shores of the Gulf of Mexico, v.-!iere everything indicates the sinking, at a remote period, of a 
 large tract of land, the place of which is now occupied by the waters of the Gulf. And may 
 not the mountain tops of this sunken land still appear to view as the islands of the West Indian 
 group ; and may not the large continent lying beyond Atlantis and the adjacent islands have 
 been none ether than America? 
 
 o* 21
 
 322 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 EUROPEAN HISTORY DURING THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 1. INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 ANALYSIS. I. The unity of ancient history. How broken, in the history of the Middle 
 Ages. Still less unity in modern history. How, only, confusion can be avoided. 2. Approxi- 
 mation towards a knowledge of universal history. Future plan of the work. What must not 
 be overlooked, and what alone we can hope to accomplish. 3. State of Europe at the begin- 
 ning of the sixteenth century. Condition of Persia. Mogul empire in Hindostan. China- 
 Egypt. The New World. Where, only, we look ior historic unity. 
 
 II. THE AGE OF HENRY VIII., AND CHARLES .V. 
 
 1. Rise of the STATES-SYSTEM OF EUROPE. Growing intricacy of the relations between 
 States. 2. Causes of the first development of the States-system. 3. The Great power of Austria 
 under Charles V. 4. Ferdinand, the brother of Charles. Philip II., son of Charles. 5. Beginning 
 
 Of THE RIVALRY BETWEEN FRANCIS I. AND CHARLKS V. The faVOr of HlCNRY VIII. OF ENG- 
 LAND courted by both. 6. Favorable position of Henry at the time of his accession. 7. Ef- 
 forts of Charles and Francis to win his favor. The result. 8. Efforts of Francis to recover 
 Navarre. The Italian war that followed. Francis defeated, and made prisoner, in the battle 
 of Pavia. [House of Bourbon.'] 9. Imprisonment, and release, of Francis. 10. A general 
 league against Charles V. 11. Operations of the duke of Rourbon in Italy. Pillage of Rome, 
 and death of Bourbon. 12. Captivity of the pope. The French army in Italy. The peace of 
 Cambray. 13. The domestic relations of Henry VIII. 14. The rise, power, and full, of Wolsey. 
 [Wolsey's soliloquy.] 
 
 15. THE REFORMATION. The maxim of religious freedom. Papal power and pretensions at 
 tliis period. Persecution of reformers. [Wicklifle. Council of Constance. The Albigenses.] 
 Effect of advancing civilization on papal power. Avarice of pope Leo. X. Indulgences. 
 Martin Luther. [Wittemberg.] 16. Luther's first opposition to the Church of Rome. His 
 gradual progress in rejecting the doctrines and rites of popery. His writings declared heretical. 
 He burns the papal bull of condemnation. 17. Declar&iion of the Sorbonne. [Sorbonne.] 
 The diet of Worms. Henry VIII. joins in opposing Luther. 18. Circumstances in Luther's 
 favor. Decrees of the diet of Spires. Protest of the Reformers. [Spires.] 19. The diet of Augs- 
 burg, 1530. [Augsburg.] Melancthon. Result of the diet. League of the Protestants. Henry 
 VIII. and Francis I. favor the Protestant cause. 20. Invasion of Hungary by the Turks. Cru- 
 sitde of Charles V. against the Moors. [Algiers ] Renewal of the war by the French monarch. 
 [Savoy.] Invasion of France by Charles. 21. Brief truce, and renewal of the war. [Nice.] 
 The Pcrties to this war, and its results. [Cerisoles. Boulogne.] 22. War carried on by Charles 
 against his Protestant German subjects. Revolt of 'Maurice of Saxony. 23. Surprise and mor 
 tification of Charles, and final treaty of Augsburg. [Passau.] 
 
 24. Circumstances which led to the ABDICATION AND RETIREMENT OF CHARLES V. [St. Just.] 
 25. The emperor in his retirement. 26. The Protestant States of Europe. Character of the Refor- 
 mation in England. Religious intolerance of Henry. Character of Henry's government. 27. 
 Brief reign of Edward VI. Reign of Mary. Character of her reign. War with France. [St. 
 Quentin.] Death of Mar)-, and afccession of Elizabeth, 1588. 
 
 III. THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. 
 
 1. The claims of Elizabeth not recognized by the Catholic States. MARY or SCOTLAND. 2. 
 Progress of Protestant principles in England. Philip II. Effect of the rivalry between France 
 and Spain. 3. Death of Henry II. of France. Francis II. and Charles IX. Mary proceeds to
 
 CHAP. III.J SIXTEENTH CKN'TURY. 323 
 
 Scotland. Principal events of her reign. She throws herself on the protection af Elizabeth. 
 4. The attempts to establish the Inquisition on the continent. Circumstances which led to the 
 CIVIL A>D RELIGIOUS WAR IN FRANCE, [llavre-de-grace.] 5. Character of this wcr. Atroci- 
 ties committed on both sides. [Guienne. Dauphiny.] 6. Battle of Dreux. Capture of the 
 opposing generals, and conclusion of the war by the treaty of Amboise. [Amboise.] 7. Re- 
 newal of the war. The "Lame Peace." Treachery of the Catholics. Peace of St. Germain. 
 [St. Germain.] 8. Designs of the French court. Preparations for the destruction of the Prot- 
 estants. 9. MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 10. General massacre throughout the king- 
 dom. Noble conduct of some officers. The princes of Navarre and Conde. The joy excited 
 by the massacre. 11. Effects produced. Renewal of the civil war. The feelings of Charles- 
 his sickness, and death. 
 
 12. The duke of Alva's administration of THE NETHERLANDS. The " Pacification of Ghent," 
 and expulsion of the Spaniards. [Ghent.] 13. Causes that led to the "union of Utrecht." 
 [Utrecht.] The States-general of 1580. [Antwerp.] Continuance of the war by Philip. 14. 
 The remaining history and fate of Alary of Scotland. 15. Resentment of the Catholics. Com- 
 plaints, and projects of Philip. 16. Vast preparations of Philip against England, and sailing of 
 THE SPANISH ARMADA. Preparations for resistance. 17. Disasters, and final destruction of 
 the fleet. Important results. Decline of the Spanish power. 18. History of France during 
 the remainder of 'the sixteenth century. Charles IX., Henry III., and Henry IV. Termination 
 of the religious wars by the EDICT or NANTES. 19. History of England after the defeat of the 
 Spanish Armada. Irish insurrection of 1598. 20. CHARACTER OF ELIZABETH. 
 
 IV. COTEMPORARY HISTORY. 
 
 1. Prominent events of the sixteenth century not included in European hist<#y. The POR 
 TUGUESE COLONIAL EMPIRE. Union of Portugal with Spain. The Hollanders. [Ormus. 
 Goa.] 2. SPANISH COLONIAL EMPIRE. Services of Cortez, and the treatment which he ro 
 ceived. 3. The conquests of Pizarro. The Spanish empire in America at the close of the six- 
 teenth century. Influence of the precious metals upon Spain. 4. THE MOGUL EMPIRE IK 
 INDIA. 5. THE PERSIAN EMPIRE. The reign of Ismael. 6. The reign of Tamasp. His three 
 sons. The youthful Abbas becomes ruler of the empire. 7. General character of his reign. 
 His character as a parent and relative. How ho is regarded by the Persians. 8. Remaining 
 history of Persia. 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY. 1. In the history of ancient Europe, two pre- 
 dominating nations, first the Greeks, and afterwards the Romans, 
 occupy the field ; preserving, in the mind of the reader, a general 
 unity of action and of interest. In the history of the Middle Ages 
 this unity is broken by the forcible dismemberment of the Roman 
 empire, by the confusion that followed the inroads of the barbarians, 
 and that attended their first attempt at social organization, and by 
 the introduction of a broader field of inquiry, embracing countries 
 and nations previously unknown. In Modern History, subsequent 
 to the fifteenth century, there is still less apparent unity, if we con- 
 sider the increased extent of the field to be explored, and the still 
 greater variety of nations, governments, and institutions, submitted 
 to our view ; and to avoid inextricable confusion, and dry summaries 
 of unintelligible events, we are under the necessity, in a brief com- 
 pend like the present, of selecting and developing the principal 
 points of historic interest, and of rendering all other matters subor- 
 dinate to the main design.
 
 324 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET IL 
 
 2. But while it would be iu vain to attempt, within the limits of a 
 work like the present, to give a separate history of every nation, the 
 
 'reader should not lose sight of any, that, as opportunities occur, 
 he may have a place in the general framework of history for the stores 
 which subsequent reading may accumulate. It was in accordance 
 with these views, that, near the close of the preceding chapter, we 
 took a general survey of the nations of Europe ; and although a few 
 of the European kingdoms will still continue to claim our chief at- 
 tention in the subsequent part of this history, we must not shut our 
 eyes to the fact that they embraced, during this period, but a small 
 portion of the population of the globe ; and that a History, strictly 
 universal, would comprise the cotemporary annals of more than a 
 hundred different nations. The extent of the field of modern his- 
 tory is indeed vast ; in it we can select only a few verdant spots, with 
 which alone we can hope to make the reader familiar ; while the 
 riches of many an unexplored region must be left to repay the labor 
 of future researches. 
 
 3. At the opening of the sixteenth century, Great Britain, Scot- 
 land, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Poland, Prussia, and 
 Turkey, were distinct and independent nations ; Hungary and Bo- 
 hemia were temporarily united under one sovereignty ; Denmark, 
 Sweden, and Norway, still feebly united by the union of Calrnar, 
 were soon to be divided again ; the Netherlands, known as the do- 
 minions of the house of Burgundy, had become a dependence of the 
 Austrian division of the Germanic empire ; and Italy, comprising 
 the Papal States, and a number of petty republics and dukedoms, 
 was fast becoming the prey of surrounding sovereigns. In the East, 
 Persia, after having been for centuries the theatre of perpetual civil 
 wars, revolutions, and changes of no interest to foreigners, again 
 emerged from obscurity at the beginning of the sixteenth century, 
 and, toward the end of that period, under the Shah Abbas, surnamed 
 the Great, established an empire embracing Persia Proper, Media, 
 Mesopotamia, Syria, and Farther Armenia. About the same time a 
 Tartar or Mogul empire was established in Hiudostan by a descend- 
 ant of the great conqueror Tamerlane. China was at this time, as 
 it had long been, a great empire, although but little known. Egypt, 
 under the successors of the victorious Saracens, still preserved the 
 semblance of sovereignty, until, in 1517, the Turks reduced it to the 
 condition of a province of the Ottoman empire. Such were the 
 principal States, kingdoms, and nations, of the Old. World, whow
 
 CHAT. III.] SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 325 
 
 annals find a place on the page of universal history ; and, turning 
 to tne West, beyond the wide ocean whose mysteries had been so re- 
 cently unveiled by the Genoese navigator, we find the germs of civil- 
 ized nations already starting into being ; and History must enlarge 
 its volume to take in a mere abstract of the annals that now begin 
 to press forward for admission to its pages. Amidst this perplexing 
 profusion of the materials of history, we turn back to the localities 
 already familiar to the reader, and seek for historic unity where only 
 it can be found, in those principles, and events, that have exerted 
 a world-wide influence on the progress of civilization, and the des- 
 tinies of the human race. 
 
 II. THE AGE OF HENRY VIII. AND CHARLES V. 1. About the 
 period of the beginning of the sixteenth century a new era opens in 
 European history, in the rise of what has sometimes been called " the 
 States-system of Europe ;" for it was now that the re- : THESTATES . 
 ciprocal influences of the European States on each other SYSTEM OF 
 began to be exerted on a large scale, and that the weaker EUROPE - 
 States first conceived the idea of a balance-of-power system that 
 should protect them against their more powerful neighbors. Hence 
 the increasing extent arid intricacy of the relations that began to 
 grow up between States, by treaties of alliance, embassies, negotia- 
 tions, and guarantees ; and the more general combination of powers 
 in the wars that arose out of the ambition of some princes, and the 
 attempts of others to preserve the political equilibrium. 
 
 2. The inordinate growth of the power of the house of Austria, 
 in the early part of the sixteenth century, first developed the de- 
 fensive and conservative system to which we have alluded ; and for 
 a long time the principal object of all the wars and alliances of 
 Europe was to humble the ambition of some one nation, whose pre- 
 ponderance seemed to threaten the liberty and independence of the 
 rest. 
 
 3, It has been stated that the marriage of Maximilian of Austria, 
 with Mary of Bur' gundy, secured to the house of Austria the whole 
 of Bur' gundy,- and the " Low Countries," corresponding to the 
 modern Netherlands. In the }*ear 1506, Charles, known in history 
 as Charles V., a grandson of Maximilian and Mary of Austria, and 
 also of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, inherited the Low Countries: 
 on the death of Ferdinand, in 1516, he became heir to the whole 
 Spanish succession, which comprehended Spain, Naples, Sicily, and
 
 MODERN HISTORY [PAST 1L 
 
 Sardinia, together with Spanish America. To these vast possessions 
 were added his patrimonial dominions in Austria; and in 1519 the 
 imperial dignity of the Germanic empire was conferred upon him by 
 the choice of th j electors, when he was only in his nineteenth year. 
 
 4. Charles soon resigned to his brother Ferdinand his hereditary 
 Austrian States ; but the two brothers, acting in concert for the ad- 
 vancement of their reciprocal interests, were regarded but as one 
 power by the alarmed sovereigns of Europe, who began to suspect 
 that the Austrian princes aimed at universal monarchy ; and their 
 jealousy was increased when Ferdinand, by marriage, secured the ad- 
 dition of Hungary and Bohemia to his dominions ; and, at a later 
 period, Charles, in a similar manner, obtained for his son, afterwards 
 Philip II. of Spain, the future sovereignty of Portugal. 
 
 5. When the imperial throne of Germany became vacant by the 
 
 death of Maximilian, Francis I. of France and Charles 
 
 Y'ALRY BE- ^' were com P et i tors f r the crown ; and on the success 
 
 TWEEN FRAN- of the latter, the mutual claims of the two princes 
 
 cis i. AND Qn eac j 1 other'g dominions, especially in Italy and the 
 
 CHARLES V. . ' r J > 
 
 Low Countries, soon made them declared enemies. 
 
 France then took the lead in attempting to regulate the balance of 
 
 m HENRY P ower against the house of Austria ; and the favor of 
 
 viii. OF Henry VIII. of England was courted by the rival mon- 
 
 ENGLAND. ^gjjg^ as ^g prince most likely to secure the victory to 
 
 whomsoever he should give the weight of his influence. 
 
 6. In year 1509 Henry VIII., then at the age of eighteen, had 
 succeeded his father Henry VII. on the throne of England, re- 
 ceiving at the same time a rich treasury and a flourishing kingdom, 
 and uniting in his person the opposing claims of the houses of York 
 and Lancaster. The real power of the English monarch was at this 
 time greater than at any previous period ; and Henry VIII. might 
 have been the arbiter of Europe, in the rivalries and wars between 
 Francis I. and Charles V., had not his actions been the result of 
 passion, vanity, caprice, or resentment, rather than of enlightened 
 policy. 
 
 7. Each of the rittil princes sedulously endeavored to enlist the 
 English monarch in his favor : both gave a pension to his prime 
 minister, cardinal Wolsey ; and each had an interview with the 
 king Francis meeting him at Calais, and Charles visiting him in 
 England, but the latter won Henry through the influence of Wol- 
 sey, whose egregrious vanity he duped by encouraging his hopes of
 
 OHAP. Ill] SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 327 
 
 promotion to the papal crown. Moreover, Henry was, at (he begin- 
 ning, ill-disposed towards the king of France, who virtually governed 
 Scotland through the influence of the regent Albany ; and, by an 
 alliance with Charles, he hoped to recover a part of those domains 
 which his ancestors had formerly possessed in France. Charles also 
 gained the aid of the pope, Leo X. ; but, on the other hand, Francis 
 was supported by the Swiss, the Genoese, and the Venetians. 
 
 8. In the year 1520 Francis seized the opportunity of an insur- 
 rection in Spain to attempt the recovery of Navarre, which had been 
 united to the French crown by marriage alliance in 1490, and con- 
 quered by Ferdinand of Spain in 1512. Navarre was won and lost 
 in the course of a few months, and the war was then transferred to 
 Italy. In two successive years the French governor of Milan was 
 driven from Lombardy : the Duke of Bourbon, 1 constable of France, 
 the best general of Francis, who had received repeated affronts from 
 the king, his master, deserted to Charles, and was by him invested 
 with the chief command of his forces; and in the year 1525 Francis 
 himself was defeated by his rebellious subject in the battle of Pavia, 
 and taken prisoner, but not until his horse had been killed under 
 him, and his armor, which is still preserved, had been indented by 
 numerous bullets and lances. In the battle of Pavia the French 
 army was almost totally destroyed. In a single line Francis con- 
 veyed the sad intelligence to his mother. " Madam all is lost but 
 honor." 
 
 9. Francis was conveyed a prisoner to Madrid ; and it was only 
 at the expiration of a year that he obtained his release, when a fever, 
 occasioned by despondency, had already threatened to put an end, 
 at once, to his life, and the advantages which Charles hoped to de- 
 rive from his captivity. Francis had already prepared to abdicate 
 the throne in favor of his son the dauphin, when Charles decided to 
 
 1. The house of Bourbon derives its name from the small village of Bourbon in the former 
 province of Bourbonnais, now in the department of Allier, thirteen miles west from Moulins, 
 and one hundred and sixty-five miles south from Paris. (Map No. XIII.) In early times this 
 V>wn had lords of its own, who bore the title of barons. Aimer, who lived in the early part 
 jf the tenth century, is the first of these barons of whom history gives any account. The male 
 princes of this line having become extinct, Beatrix, duchess of Bourbon, married Robert, 
 second son of St. Louis ; and their son Louis, duke of Bourbon, who died in 1341, became the 
 founder of the house of Bourbon. Two branches of this house took their origin from the two 
 sons of Louis. The elder line became extinct at the death of the constable of Bourbon, who 
 defeated Francis at Pavia, and was himself killed in 1527, in the assault of the city of Rome. 
 From the other line have sprung several branches, first, the royal branch, and that of Conde ; 
 since which the former has undergone several subdivisions, giving sovereigns to Fran , to 
 Spain, the two Sicilies, ana Lucca and Parma.
 
 MODERN HISTORY. [?AET IL 
 
 release the captive monarch, after exacting from him a stipulation to 
 surrender Bur' gundy, to renounce his pretensions to Milan, and Na- 
 ples, and to ally himself, by marriage, with the family of his enemy. 
 But Francis, before his release, had secretly protested, in the pres- 
 ence of his chancellor, against the validity of a treaty extorted from 
 him while a prisoner ; and, once at liberty, it was not difficult for 
 him to elude it. His joy at his release was unbounded. Being es- 
 corted to the frontiers of France, and having passed a small stream 
 that divides the two kingdoms, he mounted a Turkish horse, and 
 putting him at full speed, and waving his hand over his head, ex- 
 claimed aloud, several times, " I am yet a king !" (March 18, 1526.) 
 
 10. The liberation of Francis was the signal for a general league 
 against Charles V. The Italian States, which, since the battle of 
 Pavia, had been in the power of the Spanish and German armies, 
 now regarded the French as liberators ; the pope put himself at the* 
 head of the league ; the Swiss joined it ; and Henry VIII., alarmed 
 at the increasing power of Charles, entered into a treaty with Francis, 
 so that th very reverses of the French monarch, by exciting the 
 jealousy of other States against his rival, rendered him much stronger 
 in alliances than before. 
 
 11. During these events, the rebel Duke of Bourbon remained in 
 Italy, quartering his mercenary troops on the unfortunate inhabit- 
 ants of Milan ; but when the Italians declared against the emperor, 
 all Italy was delivered up to pillage. To obtain the greater plunder, 
 Bourbon marched upon Rome, followed not only by his own soldiers, 
 but by an additional force of fourteen thousand brigands from Ger- 
 many. Pope Clement, terrified by the greatness of the danger which 
 menaced the States of the Holy See, discharged his best troops, and 
 shut himself up in the castle of St. Angelo. Rome was attacked, 
 and carried by storm, although Bourbon fell in the assault ; the pil- 
 lage was universal, neither convents nor churches being spared ; 
 from seven to eight thousand Romans were massacred the first day ; 
 and not all the ravages of the Goths and Huns surpassed those of 
 the army of the first prince in Christendom. 
 
 12. The pillage of Rome, and the captivity of the pope, excited 
 great indignation throughout Europe ; and the hypocritical Charles, 
 instead of sending orders for his liberation, ordered prayers for hia 
 deliverance to be offered in all the Spanish churches. At this fa- 
 vorable moment Francis sent an army into Italy, which penetrated 
 to the very walls of Naples ; but here his prosperity ended ; and the
 
 CHAP flL] SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 329 
 
 impolicy of the French king, in disgusting and alienating his most, 
 faithful allies, lost for him all the advantages which he had gained. 
 Both the rival monarchs now desired peace, but both strove to dis- 
 semble their real sentiments : although Charles had been generally 
 fortunate in the contest, yet all his revenues were expended ; and 
 he desired a respite from the cares of war to enable him to crush 
 the Reformation, which had already made considerable progress in 
 his German dominions. A peace was therefore concluded at Cam- 
 bray, in August 1529, which was as glorious to Charles as it was dis- 
 graceful to France and her monarch. The former remained supreme 
 master of Italy ; the pope submitted ; the Venetians were shorn of 
 their conquests ; and Henry VIII. reaped nothing but the emperor's 
 enmity for his interference. 
 
 13. The conduct of Henry VIII. in his domestic relations reflects 
 disgrace upon his name, and is a dark stain upon his character. He 
 was first married to Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand 
 and Isabella of Spain, and aunt of Charles V. of Germany, a woman 
 much older than himself, but who acquired and retained an ascend- 
 ancy over his affections for nearly twenty years. For divorcing her, 
 and marrying Anne Boleyn, he was excommunicated by the pope, a 
 measure which induced him. to break of all allegiance to the Holy 
 See, and declare himself supreme head of the English church. Three 
 years after his second marriage, a new passion for Jane Seymour, one 
 of the queen's maids of honor, effaced from his memory all the vir- 
 tues and graces of Anne Boleyn ; and seventeen days saw the latter 
 pass from the, throne to the scaffold. The marriage ceremony with 
 the lady Jane was performed on the day following the execution. 
 Her death followed, in little more than a year. In 1540 Henry 
 married Anne of Cleves, on the recommendation of his minister 
 Cromwell ; but his dislike to his new wife hastened the fall of that 
 minister, who was unjustly condemned and executed on a charge of 
 treason. Soon after, Henry procured a divorce from Anne, and 
 married Catherine Howard, niece of the duke of Norfolk ; but on a 
 charge of dissolute conduct Catherine was brought to the scaffold. 
 In 1543 the king married Catherine Parr, who alone, of all his wives, 
 survived him ; and even she, before the king's death, came near being 
 brought to the block on a charge of heresy. 
 
 14. Soon after the accession of Henry, the celebrated Wolsey ap- 
 peared on the theatre of English politics. Successfully courting the 
 favor of the monarch, he soon obtained the first place in tho royal
 
 330 MODERN HISTORY. [PAKT II 
 
 favor, ar.d became uncontrolled minister. Numerous ecclesiastical 
 dignities were conferred upon him : in 1518, the pope, to ingratiate 
 himself with Henry, created Wolsey cardinal. Courted by the em- 
 perors of France and Germany, he received pensions from both ; 
 and ere long his revenues nearly equalled those of the crown, part 
 of which he expended in pomp and ostentation, and part in laudable 
 munificence for the advancement of learning. When Henry, seized 
 with a passion for Anne Boleyn, one of the queen's maids of honor, 
 formed the design of getting rid of Catherine, and of making the 
 new favorite his wife, Wolsey was suspected of abetting the delays 
 of the court of Rome, which had been appealed to by Henry for a 
 divorce. The displeasure of the king was excited against his minis- 
 ter ; and, in the course of three ye-ars, Wolsey, repeatedly accused 
 of treason, and gradually stripped of all his possessions, died of a 
 broken heart. (1530.) In his last moments he is said to have ex- 
 claimed, in the bitterness of humiliation and remorse, " Had I but 
 served my God as diligently as I have served my king, he would not 
 have given me over in my gray hairs. " a 
 
 a. The following soliloquy is put by Shakspeare into the mouth of the humbled favorite oa 
 the occas'on of his surrendering to Henry the great seal, and also his dying advice to his at- 
 tendant Cram well: 
 
 " Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness ! 
 
 This is the state of man ; To-day he puts forth 
 
 The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms 
 
 And bears his blushing honors thick upon him : 
 
 The third day comes a frost, a killing frost ; 
 
 And, when he thinks, good easy man, full sxrely 
 
 His greatness is a ripening, nips his root, 
 
 And then he falls, as I do. I have ventur'd 
 
 Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, 
 
 This many summers in a sea of glory ; 
 
 But far beyond my depth ; my high-blown pride 
 
 At length broke under me ; and now has left me, 
 
 Weary, and old with service, to the mercy 
 
 Of a rude stream, that must forever hide me. 
 
 Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye ; 
 
 I feel my heart new open'd : O, how wretched 
 
 Is that poor man, that hangs on princes favors 1 
 
 There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to, 
 
 That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, 
 
 More pangs and fears than wars or women have ; 
 
 And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, 
 
 Never to hope again." 
 
 "Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition ; 
 By that sin fell the angels ; how can man then, 
 The iraage of his Maker, hope to win by't ? 
 Love thyself last ; cherish those hearts that hate thoo ; 
 Corruption wins not more than honesty :
 
 CHAP. III.] SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 33 * 
 
 15. During the stirring and eventful period of the early rivalries 
 of Francis I. and Charles V. a period full of great 
 events, of conquests and reverses, all arising out of the FORMATION" 
 selfish views of individual monarchs, but none of them 
 causing any lasting change or progress in human affairs, the great 
 principle of religious freedom began to agitate all classes, and to 
 give fresh life to the public mind in Europe. At this time the 
 pope, as the head of the Catholic religion, assumed to himself both 
 spiritual and temporal power over all the kingdoms of the world : 
 often, amidst the blackest crimes, and immersed in the grossest sensu- 
 alities, he avowed, and his adherents proclaimed, the doctrine of his 
 infallibility, or " entire exemption from liability to err ;" and al- 
 though bold men in every age had protested against papal pretensions, 
 yet the great mass of the people, the clergy, the nobility, and the 
 monarchs, still regarded the pope as supreme and infallible authority 
 over the thoughts and the actions of men. The memory and opin- 
 ions of Wickliffe 1 the reformer had been solemnly condemned by the 
 council of Constance* thirty years after his death : John Huss, and 
 
 1. Wickliffe, bom in England about the year 13-24 called the "morning star of the Reforma- 
 tion" was an eminent divine and ecclesiastical reformer. He vigorously attacked papal 
 usurpation, and the abuses of the church. The pope insisted on his being brought to trial as a 
 heretic ; but he was effectually protected by his patron, the duke of Lancaster. He died in 1384. 
 
 2. Constance, a city highly interesting from its historical associations, is situated on the river 
 Rhine, at the point where the river unites the upper part of the Lake of Constance with the 
 lower. Though mostly within the natural limits of Switzerland, the city belongs to the grand 
 duchy of Baden. ( Maps Nos. XIV. and XVII.) 
 
 The great object of the celebrated Council of Constance, which continued in session from 
 1414 to 1418, was to remove the divisions in the church, settle controversies, and vindicate the 
 authority of general councils, to which the Roman pontiff was declared to be amenable. 
 When, in 1411, Sigismund ascended the throne of Germany, there Avere three popes, each of 
 whom had anathematized the two others. To put an end to these disorders, and stop the in- 
 fluence of John Huss, a native of Bohemia, who had adopted and zealously propagated the 
 doctrines of Wickliffe, Sigismund summoned a general council. The pretended heresies of 
 Wickliffe and Huss were condemned ; and the latter, notwithstanding the assurances of safety 
 given him by the German emperor, was burnt at the stake, July Gth, 1415. His friend and 
 companion, Jereme of Prague, met with the same fate, May 30th, 1416. After the ecclesiastt 
 cal dignitaries S ipposed they had sufficiently checked the progress of heresies by these exec.u- 
 
 Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace, 
 
 To silence envious tongues. Be just and fear not : 
 
 Let all the ends thou aimst at, be thy country's, 
 
 Thy God's, and truth's ; then if thou fall's!, O Cnrnwell 
 
 Thou fall'st a blessed martyr." 
 
 " O Cromwell, Cromwell, 
 Had I but serv'd my God with half the zeal 
 I serv'd my king, he would not m mine age 
 Have left me naked to mine enemies." 
 
 Shakspeare's Henry VIII, Act III., Soene IL
 
 332 MODERN HISTORY. [PART D 
 
 Jerome of Prague, with a host of less celebrated martyrs, had been 
 publicly burned for professing heretical opinions ; and the creed of 
 the unfortunate Albigenses 1 had been extinguished in blood. Yet 
 as civilization advanced, the moral power and authority of the popes 
 declined ; and the spirit of religious inquiry daily grew more rife : the 
 pope was less popular in his own dominions than at a distance ; and 
 while the imperial city was sacked by the haughty Bourbon, and the 
 pope himself was held a prisoner by a tumultuous soldiery, his emis- 
 saries were collecting tribute in the German dominions, and along 
 the shores of the Baltic. The avarice of the pope, Leo X., was 
 equal to the credulity of the Germans ; and billets of salvation, or 
 indulgencies professing to remit the punishment due to sins, even 
 before the commission of the contemplated crime, were sold by thou- 
 sands among the German peasantry. Martin Luther, a man of high 
 reputation for sanctity and learning, and then professor of theology 
 at Wittemberg 5 on the Elbe, first called in question the efficacy of 
 
 lions, they proceeded to depose the three popes, or anti-popes, John XXIII., Gregory XI I., and 
 Benedict XIII. They next elected Martin V., and thus put an end to a schism that had tasted 
 forty years. 
 
 Travellers are still shown the hall where the council assembled ; the chairs on which sat the 
 emperor and the pope ; the house in which Huss was apprehended ; his dungeon in the Do- 
 inicau monastery ; and, in the nave of the cathedral, a brazen plate let into the floor on the 
 spot where the venerable martyr listened to his sentence of death ; also the place, in a garden, 
 where he was burnt. 
 
 The decrees and excommunications of the council were despised in Bohemia ; and in a 
 bloody war of seventeen years' duration the Bohemian adherents of Huss took terrible ven- 
 geance upon the emperor, the empire, and the clergy, for his death a revenge which the gentle 
 and pious mind of Huss would never have approved. After the close of this war, the religious 
 freedom of the Hussites continually suffered more and more ; and the stricter sect of the di- 
 minished band was finally merged in the fraternity of Bohemian and Moravian brethren, which 
 arose in 1457, and, under the most violent persecutions, exhibited an honorable steadfastness 
 of faith, and the most exemplary purity. 
 
 1. Mbigenses is a name given to several heretical sects in the south of France, who agreed 
 in opposing the dominion of the Roman hierarchy, and in endeavoring to restore the sim- 
 plicity of primitive Christianity. In 1209 they were first attacked, in a cruel and desolating 
 v. ar, by the army of the cross, called together by pope Innocent III. the first war which the 
 church waged against heretics within her own dominions. In 122!) Louis VIII. of France fell 
 in a. campaign against the heretics. It is said that hundreds of thousands fell, on both sides, 
 in this war; but the Albigenses were subdued, and the inquisition was called in to extirpate 
 any remaining germs of heresy. The name of the Albigenses disappeared about the middle 
 of the thirteenth century ; but fugitives of their party formed, in the mountains of Piedmont 
 and Lombardy, what is called the French Church, which was continued to the times of the 
 Hussites and the Reformation. 
 
 2. Wittemberg, a town of Prussian Saxony, on the Elbe, is fifty miles south-west from Berlin. 
 (Map No. XVII.) It derives its chief interest from its having been the cradle of the Reforma- 
 tion, Luther and Melancthon having both been professors in its university, and their remains 
 being deposited in its cathedral. A noble bronze statue of the great reformer was erected in 
 the market-place in 1821. " It represents, in colossal proportions, the full-length figure of 
 Luther, supporting in his left hand the Bible, kept open by the right, pointing to a passage in
 
 CHA,. Ill] SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 333 
 
 these indulgences ; and his word, like a talisman, broke the spell of 
 Romish supremacy. 
 
 16. In i517 Luther first read in public his famous theses, or 
 propositions, in which he bitterly inveighed against the traffic in in- 
 dulgences, and challenged all the learned men of the day to contest 
 them with him in a public disputation. Luther did not at once form 
 the resolution to separate from the Romish Church ; but the pressure 
 of circumstances, and the warmth of controversy with his adversa- 
 ries, impelled him from one step to another ; and as he enlarged his 
 observation and reading, and discovered new abuses and errors, he 
 began to entertain doubts of the pope's divine authority rejected 
 the doctrine of his infallibility gradually abolished the practice of 
 mass, auricular confession, and the worship of images denied the 
 doctrine of purgatory, and opposed the fastings of the Romish 
 Church, monastic vows, and the celibacy of the clergy. In 1520 the 
 pope declared the writings of Luther heretical ; and Luther in re- 
 turn solemnly burned, on the public square of Wittemberg, the pa- 
 pal bull of condemnation, and the volumes of the canon law of the 
 Romish Church. 
 
 . 17. In 1521 the council of the Sorbonne, 1 in Paris, under the in- 
 fluence of the French monarch, declared, "that flames, and not reason 
 ing, ought to be employed against the arrogance of Luther ;" and 
 in the same year thadiet of Worms, at which Charles V. himself 
 presided, pronounced the imperial ban of excommunication against 
 Luther, his adherents, and protectors, condemned his writings to be 
 burned, and commanded him to be seized and brought to punish- 
 ment. The king of England, Henry VIII., who made pretensions 
 to theological learning, wrote a volume against Luther ; and the 
 pope was so pleased with this token of Henry's religious zeal, that 
 he conferred upon him the title of " defender of the faith" an ap- 
 pellation still retained by the sovereigns of England. 
 
 the inspired volume. The pedestal on which the statue stands is formed of a solid block of 
 red polished granite, twenty feet in height, ten feet in width, and eight feet in depth. On each 
 of its sides is a central table, bearing a poetical inscription, the import of the principal being 
 that 'if the Reformation be God's work, it is imperishable ; if the work of man, it will fall.' " 
 
 1. The Sorbonne, originally a college for the education of secular clergymen at the university 
 of Paris, founded about the year 1250, became so famous that its name was extended to the 
 whole theological faculty of the university. The kings seldom took any steps affecting religion 
 or the church without having asked the opinion of the Sorbonne, which, inimical both to the 
 Jesuits and the Reformation, steadfastly maintained the liberties of the Gallican church. But 
 the Sorbonne outlived its fame : its spirit often degenerated into blind zeal and ped untie obsti- 
 , nacy : its condemnation of the writings of Helvetius, Rousseau, and MarmonteL, subject* d it to 
 much derision ; and the Revolution of 1789 put an end to its existence.
 
 334 MODERN HISTORY. [PAH IJ 
 
 18 But notwithstanding this opposition from high quarters, tho 
 age was rife for changes : the art of printing rapidly spread the 
 tenets of the reformers; and many of the German princes espovsed 
 the cause of Luther, and gave him protection. But Charles V., 
 after the peace of Cambray, had determined to arrest the farther 
 progress of the Reformation ; and for this purpose he proceeded to 
 Germany, where he assembled a diet of the empire at Spires, 1 March 
 1 529 ; and here the majority of the States, which were Catholic, 
 decreed that the edicts of the diet of Worms should be retained, 
 and that all those who had been gained over to the new doctrine 
 should abstain from farther innovations. The reformers, including 
 nearly half the German princes, entered a violent protest against 
 these proceedings, on which account they were distinguished as 
 PROTESTANTS, an appellation since applied indiscriminately to all 
 the sects, of whatever denomination, that have withdrawn from the 
 Romish church. 
 
 19. In the year 1530 Charles assembled another diet of the em- 
 pire at Ausburg," to try the great cause of the Reformation, hoping 
 to be able to effect a reconcilation between the opposing parties, al- 
 though he was urged by the pope to have recourse at once to the most 
 rigorous measures against the stubborn enemies of the Catholic faith. 
 The learned and peaceable Melancthon presented to the diet the ar- 
 ticles of the Lutheran creed, since known by the name of the con- 
 fession of Augsburg ; but no reconciliation of opposing opinions 
 could be effected ; and the Protestants were commanded to renounce 
 their errors, upon pain of being put under the ban of the empire. 
 Charles was preparing to employ violence, when the Protestant 
 princes of Germany concluded a defensive league, (Dec. 1530), and 
 having obtained promises of aid from the kings of France, England, 
 and Denmark, held themselves ready for combat. At this time 
 Henry VIII., although abhorring all connection with the Lutherans, 
 was fast approaching a rupture with the pope, who stood in the way 
 of the king's contemplated divorce from his first wife Catherine, and 
 
 1. Spires, one of the most ancient cities of Germany, is in Rhenish Bavaria, on the west 
 bank of the Rhine, twenty-two miles south of Worms. There may still be seen at Spires the 
 outer walls of an old palace in which no fewer than forty-nine diets have been held, the most 
 celebrated jf which was that of 1529. In the celebrated cathedral of Spires nine German em- 
 perors, and many other celebrated personages, have been buried. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Augsburg is a city of Bavaria, between, and near the confluence of, the rive:s Wertach 
 and Lecb, branches of the Danube, thirty-five miles northwest fr6m Muni '.h. / ugsbnrg U 
 very ancient. Augustus having settled a colony in it about twelve years B. \ an- m.med it ( 
 Augusta rindelicarun (Map No. XVII.)
 
 CHAP. III.] SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 335 
 
 his marriage with the afterwards unfortunate Anne Boleyn ; and 
 Francis, although he hurned heretics in France, did not hesitate to 
 league himself with the reformers of Germany, in order to weaken 
 the power of his rival. 
 
 20. In addition to these obstacles to the purpose of Charles, at 
 this moment the Turkish sultan, Solyman the Magnificent, invaded 
 Hungary, at the head of three hundred thousand men ; and Charles, 
 fearing the consequences of a religious war at this juncture, hastened 
 to offer to the Protestants all the toleration they demanded, until 
 the next diet. After the Turks had been defeated, and driven back 
 upon their own territories, Charles thought it his duty, as the great- 
 est monarch, and the protector of entire Christendom, to make a 
 crusade against the piratical Moors of Northern Africa, who, under 
 their leader Barbarossa, held Tunis and Algiers, 1 and were in close 
 alliance with the Turkish sultan. In the summer of 1535 he landed 
 at Tunis at the head of thirty thousand men, defeated the Moors in 
 battle, and, to his inexpressible joy, was enabled to set at liberty 
 twenty-two thousand Christian captives, whom the Moors had re- 
 duced to slavery. On his return from this expedition he found the 
 king of France preparing for war against him ; and the hostilities 
 which immediately broke out between the rival monarchs delayed the 
 decisive rupture between the Catholics and Protestants of Germany 
 for a period of twelve years. In the summer of 1535 Francis in- 
 vaded Savoy, 2 and threatened Milan ; and in the following year 
 
 1. Algiers, or Algeria, a country of northern Africa, having the city Algiers for its capital, 
 comprises the .\~umidia proper of the ancients. It formed part of the Roman empire ; but 
 during the reign of Valentinian III., count Boniface, the governor of Africa, revolted, and 
 called in the Vandals to his assistance. The latter having taken possession of the country, held 
 it till they were expelled by Belisarius, A. D. 534, who restored Africa to the Eastern empire. 
 It was overran and conquered by the Saracens in the seTenth century : in the early part of the 
 sixteenth century Ferdinand of Spain wrested several provinces from them ; but ere long the 
 Spanish yoke was thrown off by the famous Corsairs known in history as Barbarossa I. and 
 II. Algiers then became the centre of the new empire founded by the Barbarossas, and for a 
 long period carried on almost incessant hostilities against the powers of Christendom, capturing 
 '.heir ships, and reducing their subjects to slavery. Attempts were made at different times to 
 abate this nuisance. In 1541, Charles V., six years after his expedition against Tunis, attacked 
 Algiers; but his fleet having been nearly destroyed by a storm, he w* compelled to return 
 with great loss. Both France and England repeatedly chastised, the insolence of the Algerines 
 by bombarding their city ; but in general the European powers purchased exemption from the 
 attacks of Algerine cruisers by paying tribute to the dey. In 1815 the Americans compelled 
 the dey to renounce all tribute from them, and pay sixty thousand dollars as indemnification 
 for their losses ; and in the following year tlie English bombarded Algiers, destroyed the Al- 
 gerine fleet, in the harbor, and compelled the dey to set all his Christian slaves at liberty, and 
 engage to cease his piracies. Finally, in 1830, a war arose between France and Algiers, which 
 has resulted ia the reduction of the latter to a province of the French empire. 
 
 2. Savov, now included in the kingdom of Sardinia, is in north-western Italy, goulh of the
 
 336 MODERN HISTORY. 
 
 Charles V. entered the south of France with a large force ; but the 
 French marshal, Montmorency, who commanded there, acting the 
 part of the Roman Fabius, avoided a general battle, laid waste the 
 country, and finally compelled the emperor to retreat in disgrace, 
 with the wreck of a ruined army. 
 
 21. In 1538. the rival monarchs, having exhausted all their pecu- 
 niary resources, concluded, at Nice, 1 a truce of ten years, through 
 the mediation of the pope ; but in 1 542 war was again renewed, 
 the king of Scotland and the sultan of Turkey, together with the 
 Protestant princes of Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, uniting with 
 France, and the king of England taking part with the emperor 
 Charles V. In vain Francis and Solyman, uniting their fleets, bom- 
 barded the castle of Nice ; and the odious spectacle of the crescent 
 and the cross united, alienated all the Christian world from the king 
 of France. (1543.) The French, however, gained the brilliant vic- 
 tory of Cerisoles 1 against the allies, (April 1544,) but Henry VIII., 
 crossing over to France, captured Boulogne." (Sept. 1544.) Already 
 Charles had penetrated within thirteen leagues of Paris, when he 
 formed a separate treaty with Francis, at Cressy. A short time later 
 a peace was proclaimed between Francis and Henry, both of whom 
 died in the same year, 1547. 
 
 22. At the time of the death of the king of France and the king 
 of England, Charles V. was engaged in a war with his Protestant 
 German subjects, having now determined, in concert with the pope, 
 to adopt decisive measures for putting down the Reformation in his 
 dominions. At the commencement of the war, the Protestant Ger- 
 man States, although abandoned by France, Denmark, and England, 
 leagued together for the common defence ; but Maurice of Saxony, 
 one of the leading Protestant princes, deserted to the emperor, and 
 the isolated members of the league were soon overthrown. The rule 
 of Charles now became highly tyrannical ; and Catholics and Prot- 
 estants equally declaimed against him. At length Maurice, to whom 
 Charles was chiefly indebted for his recent victories, being secretly 
 
 I-ake of Geneva, and bordering on France and Switzerland. (Map No. XIII.) Savoy was 
 uader the Roman dominion till the year 400 : it belonged to Bur' guruly till 530, to France till 
 879, to Aries till 1000, when it had its own counts, and, in 1416, was erected into a duchy. 
 In 1792 it became a part of France, and hi ]814 and 1815 was ceded to Sardinia. (Maps 
 Nos. XIV. and XVII.) 
 
 1. Nice is a seaport of north-western Italy, ninety-five miles south-west from Genoa. (Map 
 No. XIII.) 
 
 2. Cerisoles is a small village of Piedmont, near Carignan, in north-western Italy. 
 
 , 3. ttoulogne is a seaport town of France on the English Channel, near the Straits of DOTM 
 twenty miles south-west from Calais. (Map No. XIII.)
 
 CHAP. IILJ SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 337 
 
 dissatisfied with the conduct of the emperor, formed a bold plan for 
 establishing religious freedom, and German liberties, but concealed 
 his projects until the most favorable moment for putting them into 
 execution. Having concluded a secret treaty with Henry II. of 
 France, the son and successor of Francis, in 1552 he suddenly pro- 
 claimed war again-st the emperor, issuing at the same time a mani- 
 festo of grievances. 
 
 23. Charles, taken completely by surprise, narrowly escaped being 
 made prisoner ; and after having had the mortification of seeing all 
 his projects overthrown by the man whom he had most trusted, he 
 was compelled to sign the convention of Passau 1 with the Protest- 
 ants. Three years later, the bad success of the war which he car- 
 ried on against France changed this convention into the definite 
 peace of Augsburg, (Sept. 1555,) by which the free exercise of re- 
 ligion was secured to the Protestants throughout Germany, although 
 neither party was allowed to seek proselytes at the expense of the 
 other. Such was the first victory of religious liberty under the 
 banner of the Keformation. The spirit that had been awakened, 
 pursued, from this time, a determined course, and all the efforts of 
 princes were not able to arrest, its progress. 
 
 24. The treaty of Augsburg was to Charles V. the hand-writing 
 on the wall which showed him that the end of the mighty power 
 which he had wielded was fast approaching. So offended was the 
 pope at the sanction which Charles had given to the principles of 
 religious toleration, that he became the avowed enemy of the house 
 of Austria, and entered into a close alliance with the 
 
 young king of France. Charles saw, from afar, the TIOXANDRK- 
 storm that was approaching, and, abandoned as he was TIREMEXT OF 
 by fortune, afflicted by disease, and opposed in his de- 
 clining years by a rival in the full vigor of life, he wisely resolved 
 not to forfeit his fame by vainly struggling to retain a power which 
 he was no longer able to wield ; and, in imitation of Diocletian, to 
 the surprise of the world he abdicated his throne, and having re- 
 signed his German empire to his brother Ferdinand, and his king- 
 doms of Spam, the Netherlands, and Italy, to his son Philip, he re- 
 tired to end his days in the solitude of the monastery of St. Just. 1 
 
 1. Passau is a fortified frontier city of eastern Bavaria, on the southern bank of the Danube. 
 It derives its chief historical importance from the treaty concluded there in 1552. (.Wop No. 
 XVII.) 
 
 2. The monastery of St. Just is in the province of Estremadura in Spain, near the towc of 
 Plaaeiicia, about one hundred and twenty miles south-west from Madrid. (JUnp No. XIII.) 
 
 r 22
 
 338 MODERN HISTORY. [PAST H. 
 
 25. The ex-emperor divided the hours of his retirement between 
 pious meditation and mechanical inventions, taking little interest in 
 the affairs of the world around him. It is related of him that, for 
 amusement, he once endeavored to make two watches go exactly 
 alike. Several times he thought he had succeeded ; but all in vain 
 the one went too fast, the other too slow. At length he exclaimed ! 
 " Behold, not even two watches can I bring to agree with each other; 
 and yet, fool that I was, I thought that I should be able to govern, 
 like the works of a watch, so many nations all living under different 
 skies, in different climes, and speaking different languages." Finally, 
 shortly before his death, he caused a solemn rehearsal to be made 
 of his own funeral obsequies a too faithful picture of that eclipsed 
 glory which he had survived. He died in the year 1558, being at 
 the time in the fifty-sixth year of his age. 
 
 26. During the reign of Charles V., England, Sweden, and Den- 
 mark, had followed the example of Germany in separating from the 
 church of Rome. The Reformation in England, however, was, at 
 this early period, a political rather than a moral and religious change, 
 accomplished by the king and the aristocracy with little regard to the 
 dictates of conscience or the convictions of reason, and retaining in 
 part the Catholic hierarchy. By a decree of parliament (1534) the 
 king was acknowledged as the protector and supreme head of the 
 Church of England ; the monasteries were suppressed, and their 
 property, amounting to more than a million of dollars, was given to 
 ttte crown. Nothing would induce the king to renounce the title, 
 which he had received from the pope, of " defender of the faith ;" 
 and, with equal intolerance, he persecuted both Cathofics and Pro- 
 testants, the former for having denied his supremacy, and the latter 
 as heretics. But while Henry VIII. merely withdrew his kingdom 
 from the authority of the pope, the true principles of the Reforma- 
 tion were spreading among the people. The government of Henry 
 was administered with numerous violations, both of the chartered 
 privileges of Englishmen, and of those still more sacred rights 
 which national law has established ; and yet we meet, in cotemporary 
 authorities, with no expressions of abhorrence at his tyranny ; but 
 the monarch is often mentioned, after his death, in language of eulogy. 
 Although he had few qualities that deserve esteem, he had many 
 which a nation is pleased to behold in a sovereign. 
 
 27. On the death of Henry VIII., in 1547, and the accession
 
 Cau>. Ill] SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 339 
 
 of his son Edward a VI., then in the tenth year of his age, the 
 Protestant religion prevailed in England ; but this amiable prince 
 died at the early age of fifteen ; and after a rash attempt of a 
 few of the nobility to seat Lady Jane Grey, niece to Henry VIII., 
 on the throne, the sceptre passed to the hands of Edward's sister 
 Mary, b (1553) called the "Bloody Mary," an intolerant Catholic 
 and cruel persecutor of the Protestants. In her reign, of only five 
 years' duration, more than eight hundred miserable victims Mere 
 burnt at the stake, martyrs to their religious opinions. Mary mar- 
 ried Philip II. of Spain, the son and successor of Charles V., who 
 induced her in 1557 to unite with him in the war against France. 
 Among the events of this war, the most remarkable are the victory 
 of St. Quentin, 1 gained by the Spaniards, and the conquest of Calais 
 by the French, under the duke of Guise, the last possession of the 
 English in France. (1558.) In the same year occurred the death 
 of Mary, about a month later than the death of Charles V. Mary 
 was succeeded by her sister Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, 
 under whose reign the Protestant religion became firmly established 
 in England. 
 
 III. THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. 1. As the marriage of Henry 
 VIII. with Anne Boleyn had not been sanctioned by the Romish 
 Church, the claims of Elizabeth were not recognized by the Catholic 
 States of Europe ; and, the youthful Mary, c queen of 
 Scotland, and grand neice of Henry VIII., and nest ^^^D* 
 heir to the crown if the illegitimacy of Elizabeth could 
 be established, was regarded by them as the rightful claimant of the 
 throne. Mary, who had been educated in France, in the Catholia 
 faith, and had been married when very young to the dauphin, was 
 persuaded by the king of France, and her maternal uncles, the 
 Guises, to assume the arms and title of queen of England ; a false 
 step which laid the foundation of all her subsequent misfortunes. 
 
 2. Elizabeth endeavored to promote Protestant principles, as the 
 
 1. St. Quentin, formerly a place of great strength, is a town of France, in the former province 
 of Picardy, eighty miles north-east from Paris. On the 10th of August, 1557, the army of 
 Philip II., commanded by the duke of Savoy, engaged the French, commanded by the consta- 
 ble Montmoreuci, near this town, when the French were totally defeated, with the loss of all 
 fceir artillery and baggage, and about seven thousand men killed and prisoners. The town, 
 defended by the famous admiral Coligni, soon afterwards fell into the hands of the Spaniards. 
 (.Map No. XIU.) 
 
 a. Son of Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour. 
 
 b. Daughter of Henry's first wife Catherine. 
 
 c. Daughter of James V., who was son of James IV., and Margaret of England. See p. 307. 

 
 340 MODERN HISTORY [PAET IL 
 
 best safeguaid )f her throne; and in the year 1559 the parliament 
 formally abolished the papal supremacy, and established the Church 
 of England in its present form. On the other side Philip II. was 
 the champion of the Catholics ; and hence England now became the 
 counterpoise to Spain, as France had been during the reign of 
 Charles V., while the ancient rivalry between France and Spain pre 
 vented these Catholic powers from cordially uniting to check the 
 progress of the Reformation. 
 
 3. On the death of Henry II. of France, by a mortal wound re- 
 ceived at a tournament, (1559) the feeble Francis II., the husband 
 of Mary of Scotland, ascended the throne, but died the following 
 year, (Dec. 1560,) and was succeeded by his brother Charles IX., 
 then at the age of only ten years. Mary then left France for her 
 native dominions ; but she found there the Romish church over- 
 thrown, and Protestantism erected in its stead. The marriage of 
 the queen to the young Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, in spite of the 
 remonstrances of Elizabeth, led to the first open breach between 
 Mary and her Protestant subjects. Darnley, jealous of the ascend- 
 ancy which an Italian, David Rizzio, Mary's private secretary, had 
 acquired over her, headed a band of conspirators who murdered the 
 favorite before the eyes of the queen. Soon after, the house which 
 Darnley inhabited was blown up by powder ; Darnley was buried un- 
 der its ruins ; and three months later Mary married the earl of Both- 
 well, the principal author of the crime. An insurrection of the Pro- 
 testant lords followed these proceedings ; Mary was forced to dismiss 
 Bothwell, and resign the crown to her infant son James VI., but 
 subsequently endeavoring to resume her authority, and being defeat- 
 ed by the regent Murray, her own brother, she fled into England, 
 and threw herself upon the protection of Elizabeth, her deadly enemy. 
 (1568.) Elizabeth retained the unfortunate Mary a prisoner, gave 
 the guardianship of her young son to whom she pleased, and, through 
 her influence over the Protestant nobility of Scotland, was enabled 
 to govern that country mostly at her will. 
 
 4. During these evente in Scotland Elizabeth was carrying on a 
 secret war against the attempts of Philip II. to establish the inqui- 
 sition in the Netherlands, and also against a similar design of the 
 Catholic party in France, which ruled that country during the mi- 
 nority of the sovereign. In both these countries the attempts of the 
 Catholic rulers provoked a desperate resistance. In France, banish- 
 ment or death had become the penalty of heresy, when, in January
 
 CHAPIIL] SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 34 1 
 
 1562, an edict was issued by the government, through the influence 
 of the quoen regent, granting tolerance to the Hugue- 
 
 ' ' . II. CIVIL AND 
 
 nots, as the b reach P rotestants were called, and allowing RELIGIOUS 
 them to assemble for worship outside the walls of towns. WAR IN 
 The powe.iul family of Guises were indignant at 
 the countenance thus given to heresy ; and as the duke of Guise 
 was passing through a small village, his followers fell upon the Pro- 
 testants who were assembled outside the walls in prayer, and killed 
 sixty of their number. This atrocity was the signal for a general 
 rising ; the prince of Conde, the leader of the Protestant party, took 
 possession of Orleans, and made that town the head-quarters of the 
 Huguenots, as the capital was of the Catholics, while at the same 
 time the aid of Philip of Spain was openly proffered to the Guises, 
 and Conde concluded a treaty with Elizabeth, to whom he delivered 
 Havre-de-Grace 1 in return for a corps of six thousand men. 
 
 5. At the opening of this civil and religious war, the greatest en 
 thusiasm prevailed on both sides, in the opposing armies prayers 
 were heard in common, morning and evening, there was no gam- 
 bling, no profane language, nor dissipation ; but, under an exterior 
 of sanctity, feelings of the most vindictive hate were nourished, and 
 the direst cruelties were openly perpetrated in the name of religion. 
 The Catholic governor of Guienne" went through his province with 
 hangmen, marking his route by the victims whom he hung on the 
 trees by the road-side. On the other hand, a Protestant baron in 
 Dauphiny 3 precipitated his prisoners from the top of a tower on 
 pikes ; both parties made retaliatory reprisals, each spilling blood 
 upon scaffolds of its own erection. 
 
 6. The first great battle was fought at Dreux, 4 the prince of Conde 
 commanding the army of the Protestants, and the constable Mont- 
 morency that of the Catholics ; but while the latter won the field, each 
 of the two generals became prisoner to the opposite party. The 
 duke of Guise, who was next in command to Montmorency, treated 
 
 1. Havre-de-gracc, now called Havre, is a fortified town, and the principal commercial sea- 
 port, on the western coast of France, at the mouth of Ihe river Seine, one hundred and nine 
 miles north-west from Paris. {Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. The province of Guienne was in the south-west part of the kingdom, on both sides oi the 
 Garonne. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 3. The province of Dauphiny, of which Grenoble was the capital, was in the south-eastern 
 part of France, having Bur' gundy on the north, Italy on the east, Provence on the south, and 
 the Rhine on the west. {Map No. XIII.) . 
 
 4. Dreux, the ancient seat of the counts of Dreux, is a town of France, forty-flve miles a 
 dttle snith of west from Paris. (Map No. XIII.)
 
 342 MJDERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 his captive rival with the utmost generosity : they shared the same 
 tent the same bed ; and while Conde, from the strangeness of his 
 position, remained wakeful Guise, he declared, enjoyed the most pro- 
 found sleep. The admiral Coligni succeeded to the command of the 
 defeated Huguenots; and Orleans, their principal post, was only 
 saved by the assassination of the duke of Guise, whom a Protestant, 
 from behind, wounded by the discharge of a pistol. The capture or 
 death of the chiefs on both sides, Coligni excepted, brought about 
 an accommodation ; and in March, 1563, the treaty of Amboise 1 was 
 declared, granting to the Protestants full liberty of worship within the 
 towns of which they then were in possession. 
 
 7. The treaty of Amboise was scarcely concluded when its terms 
 began to be modified by the court, so that, as a cotemporary writer 
 observes, " edicts took more from the Protestants in peace than force 
 could take from them in war." The Protestant leaders, Conde and 
 Coligni, tried in vain to get possession of the young king ; and a battle 
 was fought in the very suburbs of Paris, in which the aged Mont- 
 morency was slain. (1567.) A " Lame Peace, " a concluded in the 
 following year, confirmed that of Amboise ; but the wary Protestant 
 leaders saw in it only a trap to ensnare them as soon as their army 
 should be disbanded. The mask was soon thrown off by an attempt 
 of the court to seize the two chiefs : the Huguenots were defeated 
 in four battles ; Conde was slain, and Coligni severely wounded ; 
 but in 1570 the peace of St. Germain 2 was concluded ; and amnesty 
 and liberty of worship were again granted to the Protestants. 
 
 8. The object of the court, however, was not peace, but vengeance ; 
 and Charles IX., now in his twentieth year, engaged zealously in the 
 project of his mother Catherine, to entice the Protestant leaders to 
 the capital, and there massacre them, and afterwards carry on a war 
 of extermination against the Huguenots throughout the kingdom. 
 For the purpose of enticing the Huguenots to the capital, and lulling 
 them into security, it was proposed that young Henry of Navarre, a 
 Protestant, should espouse the king's sister Margaret, a marriage 
 
 1. Amboise is a town and castle on the Loire, in the former province of Touraine. fifteen 
 miles east of Tours. The castle occupies the summit of a rock about ninety feet in height. 
 (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. St. Germain is a town of France, on a hill near the south bank of the Seine, six miles 
 north of Versailles, and nine miles north-west from Paris. It is chiefly noted for its palace, 
 originally built l-y Charles V., and often the residence of the kings of France. James II. of 
 England, with mosH>f tils family, passed their exile, and died, in it. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 a. So called as well r >m its infirm and uncertain nature, as from the accidental lameness of 
 iU two ue'i jtiatora.
 
 CHAP. Ill] SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 343 
 
 which would, in itself, be a bond of union between the two parties. 
 The nuptials were celebrated with the greatest magnificence ; and 
 amid the festivities which followed, the plan of the massacre wa? 
 matured. When the decree of extermination was placed before 
 Charles for his signature, he at first hesitated, appalled by the enor- 
 mity of the deed, but at length signed it, exclaiming, " let none es- 
 cape to reproach me." 
 
 9. About three o'clock in the morning of St. Bartholomew's day, 
 the 24th of August, 1572, the young duke of Guise and his band of 
 cut-throats commenced the blood\ r work by breaking into 
 
 . . . III. MASSA- 
 
 the apartment of the aged Coligni, and slaying him while CUE OF ST. 
 engaged in prayer ; the tocsin was sounded, and the BARTHOL- 
 Catholics of Paris, with the sign of the cross in their 
 caps to distinguish them, rushed forth to the massacre of their 
 brethren. What is surprising, the victims made no resistance ! They 
 would not derogate, at such a moment, from their character of mar- 
 tyrs. The massacre lasted, in Paris, eight days and nights, without 
 any apparent diminution of the fury of the murderers. 
 
 10. Charles commanded the same scene to be renewed in every 
 town throughout the kingdom ; and fifty thousand Protestants are 
 believed to have fallen victims to the monarch's order. A few com- 
 manders, however, refused to obey the edict : one wrote back to the 
 court, " that he commanded soldiers, not assassins ;" and even the 
 public executioner of a certain town, when a dagger was put into his 
 hands, threw it from him, and declared himself above the crime. 
 The prince of Navarre, who had espoused the king's sister, and hia 
 companion the young prince of Conde, were spared only on the con- 
 dition of becoming Catholics ; but both yielded in appearance only. 
 A circumstance as horrible as the massacre itself, was the joy it ex- 
 cited. Philip II., thinking Protestantism subdued, sent to congratu- 
 late the court of France : medals to commemorate the event were 
 struck at Rome ; and the pope went in state to his cathedral, and 
 returned public thanks to Heaven for this signal mercy. 
 
 11. But the crime from which so much was expected, produced 
 neither peace nor advantage ; and the civil war was renewed with 
 greater force than ever : mere abhorrence of the massacre caused 
 many Catholics to turn Huguenots ; and although the latter were at 
 first paralyze i by the blow, the former were stung by remorse and 
 shame. Charles himself seemed stricken already by avenging fate. 
 As the accounts of the murders of old men, women, and children, were
 
 34 1 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET 11. 
 
 successively brought to him, while the massacre continued, he drew 
 aside M. Ambroisc, his first surgeon, to whom he was much attached, 
 although he was a Protestant, and said to him, " Ambroise, I know 
 not what has come over me these two or three days, but I find my 
 mind and body in disorder ; I see everything as if I had a fever ; 
 every moment, as well waking as sleeping, the hideous and bloody 
 faces of the killed appear before me ; I wish the weak and innocent 
 had not been included." From that time a continued fever preyed 
 upon him, and, eighteen mouths later, carried him to the grave, 
 (May 1574,) but not until he had been compelled to grant the Hu 
 guenots a peace, after seeing that his grand and sweeping crime had 
 but enfeebled the Catholic party, instead of insuring its triumph. 
 
 12. At the time of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, civil war 
 iv THE was ra S" 1 g * n t^e Netherlands. During the six years 
 NETHEE- of the administration of the duke of Alva, Philip's gov- 
 
 LANPS. ern0 r in that country, the land was desolated by the in- 
 satiate cruelty of one of the greatest monsters of wickedness the 
 world has ever seen ; and it is the recorded boast of Alva himself 
 that, during his brief administration, he caused eighteen thousand of 
 the inhabitants to perish by the hands of the executioner. At length, 
 in 1572, a general rising against the Spanish power was organized, 
 the prince of Orange being at the head of the revolters. After a 
 war of "varied fortunes on both sides, in 1576 the States-general, or 
 Congress, of most of the Batavian and Belgic provinces, met, and as- 
 sumed the reins of government in the name of the king, and soon 
 after concluded a union between the States, which is known as the 
 Pacification of GJicnt. 1 The expulsion, from the country, of Spanish 
 soldiers and other foreigners was decreed ; Alva's sanguinary de- 
 crees and edicts against heresy, were repealed, and religious tolera- 
 tion guaranteed. 
 
 13. Ere long, however, the confederacy thus formed fell to pieces, 
 owing to jealousies between the Catholic and Protestant States; 
 and it became evident that freedom could be attained only by a closer 
 union of the provinces, resting on an entire separation from Spain. 
 Acting on this belief, in January 1579 the prince of Orange con- 
 voked an assembly of deputies at Utrecht, 3 where was signed the 
 
 \. Ghent is a city of Belgium, thirty miles north-west from Brussels. It belonged, success- 
 ively, to the counts of Flandsrs and the dukes of Bur' gundy ; but the citizens enjoyed a great 
 degree of independence. It was the birth-place of the emperor Charles V. ( opNo. XV.) 
 
 2. Utreclit is a city of Holland, on the old Rhine, twenty miles south-east from Vmsterdam. ID
 
 CHAP. IIL] SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 345 
 
 famous act called the Union of Utrecht, the real basis or fundamental 
 compact of the Republic of the United provinces. Early in the 
 following year, 1580, the States-general assembled at Antwerp, 1 and, 
 in spite of all the opposition of the Catholic deputies, the authority 
 of Spain was renounced forever, and the " United Provinces" de- 
 clared a free and independent State. Philip, however, still waged 
 a vindictive war against them, while they received important aid 
 from Elizabeth of England, a circumstance which led Philip to de- 
 clare war against the latter country. 
 
 14. The destinies of the unhappy queen of Scotland had long 
 been implicated with the designs of the Catholics of Europe against 
 the power and throne of Elizabeth. About the time of the massacre 
 of St. Bartholomew, the infamous duke of Alva, the Spanish gov- 
 ernor of the Netherlands, had formed a project of uniting with the 
 English Catholics and Mary in a confederacy against Elizabeth ; and 
 Mary was charged with countenancing the design ; but although par- 
 liament applied for her immediate trial, Elizabeth was satisfied with 
 increasing the rigor and strictness of her confinement. Mary was 
 subsequently, and repeatedly, charged with being cognizant of simi- 
 lar plans ; but her participation in any of them is exceedingly doubt- 
 ful. At length, however, an act of parliament was passed authoriz- 
 ing her trial ; and after an investigation, in which law and justice 
 were little regarded, she was condemned to death. Elizabeth, after 
 some delay and hesitation, signed the warrant for her execution, 
 which, she said, she designed to keep by her, to be used only in case 
 of the attempt of Mary to escape ; but her council, having obtained 
 possession of it from her private secretary, hastily despatched it to 
 those who had charge of the prisoner, and the unhappy Mary was 
 beheaded, after having been in captivity nineteen years. (1587.) 
 
 15. {The execution of the queen of Scots inflamed the resentment 
 of the Catholics throughout Europe, and gave additional vigor to 
 the preparations of Philip II. for an invasion of England, a project 
 which he had long had in contemplation, and by which he hoped to 
 destroy the power of the great supporter of the Prostestant cause. 
 With justice, perhaps, Philip complained of the depredations which 
 
 addition to the famous act called the " Union of Utrecht," signed here on the 29th of January, 
 1579, the treaties of Utrecht which terminated the war of the Spanish succession, and gave 
 peace to Europe, (see p. 405, were concluded here in 1713 and J714. (Map Nj. XV.) 
 
 1. Antwerp is a maritime city of Belgium, on the north bank of the Scheldt, twenty-six 
 miles north from Brussels. In the sixteenth century Antwerp enjoyed a more extensive foreign 
 'nuie than any other city in Europe. (.V<y No. XV.)
 
 346 MODERN HISTORY. [PAUT IL 
 
 the English, under their great admiral Sir Francis Drake, had for 
 many years committed on the Spanish possessions in South America, 
 and more than once on the coasts of Spain itself; and now a vast 
 armament was prepared to sweep the English from the seas, ravago 
 their coasts, burn their towns, and dethrone their Protestant queen, 
 
 16. In May, 1588, the Spanish fleet of one hundred and thirty 
 ships, some the largest that had ever plowed the deep, carrying, ex- 
 clusive of eight thousand sailors, no less than twenty 
 
 SPANISH thousand of the bravest troops in the Spanish armies, a 
 ARMADA. i ar g e invading force in those days, sailed from the har- . 
 bor of Lisbon for the English coast. The pope had blessed the ex- 
 pedition, and offered the sovereignty of England as the conqueror's 
 prize ; and the Catholics throughout Europe were so confident of 
 success that they had named the armament " The Invincible Ar- 
 mada." The queen of England beheld the preparations, and heard 
 the vauntings of her enemies, with a resolution worthy of the occa- 
 sion and the cause. She visited the seaports in person, superintend- 
 ed the preparations for defence, and on horseback addressed the 
 troops ; and such was the enthusiasm which she everywhere inspired, 
 that even her Catholic subjects joined their countrymen, heart and 
 hand, against foreign domination. Lord Howard of Effingham was 
 appointed admiral of the fleet; Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher, the 
 most renowned seamen in Europe, served under him ; while an army 
 of forty-five thousand men was organized for the defence of the 
 coast and the capital. 
 
 17. After the Armada had sailed from Lisbon it suffered consider- 
 ably from a storm off" the French coast : in passing through the Eng- 
 lish Channel it was seriously harassed, during several days, by the 
 lighter English vessels ; and while at anchor off Calais, the English 
 sent a number of fire-ships into the midst of the fleet, destroyed 
 several vessels, and threw the others into such confusion that the 
 Spanish admiral no longer thought of victory, but only of escape 
 As the south wind blew, he was unable to retrace his course, and 
 therefore resolved to return by coasting the northern shores of Scot- 
 land and Ireland. But his disasters were not ended : many of his 
 vessels were driven, by a storm, on the coasts of Norway and Scot- 
 land : off the Irish coast a second storm was experienced, with al- 
 most equal loss ; and only a few shattered vessels of this mighty ar- 
 mament returned to Spain, to bring intelligence of the calamities that 
 bad overwhelmed the rest. The defeat of the armada was regarded
 
 CHAP. IIL] SIXTEENTH CEXTU11Y. 347 
 
 as the triumph of the Protestant cause; it exerted a favorable in 
 fluence on the welfare of the United Provinces, and virtually secured 
 their independence ; and it raised the courage of the Huguenots in 
 France, and completely destroyed the decisive influence which Spain 
 had long maintained in the affairs of Europe. Henceforth the naval 
 power and the commerce of Spain declined ; and the king, at his 
 death in 1598, bequeathed a vast debt to a nation whose resources, 
 notwithstanding her rich mines of gold and silver in the New World, 
 were already exhausted. 
 
 18. The internal history of France, since the massacre of St. Bar- 
 tholomew, and the death of Charles IX., is filled with deplorable 
 civil wars during most of the remaining portion of the sixteenth 
 century. Charles was succeeded by his brother Henry III., who 
 endeavored to play the opposing Catholic and Protestant parties 
 against each other ; but being obliged, at length, by the violence 
 of the Catholic league, to throw himself on the protection of the 
 Protestants, he was assassinated by James Clement, a fanatic 
 monk, just as he was on the point of driving his enemies from 
 Paris. (Aug. 1589.) In the death of Henry IIL, the house of 
 Valois became extinct, and the throne passed by right of inherit- 
 ance to the house of Bourbon, in the person of the Protestant Henry 
 of Navarre, who now became king of France, with the title of Henry 
 IV. He was at first opposed by the Catholic league ; but. after a 
 struggle of four years, in which he received some aid from Eliza- 
 beth of England, he abjured the Protestant faith, and thus became 
 king of a united people. (1593-4.) To the Huguenots, however, 
 he atoned for his compulsory desertion, by issuing, in VI THE 
 1598, the celebrated Edict of Nantes, 1 which terminated EDICT OF 
 the religious wars that had distracted France during NANTES - 
 thirty-six years. The Edict of Nantes secured to the Protestants 
 the free exercise of their religion, and an equal claim with the Catho- 
 lics to all offices and dignities. The parliament made considerable 
 opposition to the registering of this edict, and the king was obliged 
 to use menaces, as well as persuasion, to overcome their obstinacy. 
 
 19. The history of England, after the defeat of the Spanish Ar- 
 mada, offers few events of interest during the remainder of the reign 
 
 1. Nantes is a celebrated commercial city and seaport of France, about thirty-four miles 
 from the mouth of the Loire, and two hundred and ten south-west from Paris. Before the 
 jonquest of Gaul by the Romans it was already a considerable city, and the capital of tho 
 ffamnetes^ who distinguished themselves by their opposition to Julius Caesar. '.Map No. XIII.)
 
 348 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II, 
 
 of Elizabeth. A general insurrection, however, broke out in Ire- 
 land in 1598, the design of which was to effect the entire expulsion 
 of the English from the island ; but although the insurgents were 
 supplied with troops and ammunition by the Spanish monarch, and 
 the pope held out ample indulgences in favor of those who should 
 enlist to combat the English heretics, yet the rebels ultimately failed 
 in their enterprise, after a sanguinary war Avhich lasted six years. 
 
 20. The splendor of Elizabeth's reign is a theme on which Eng- 
 lish historians love to dwell. At this time England held the balance 
 vii CHARAC- f P ower m Christendom, a position that was owing, in 
 TEE OF no small degree, to the personal character of the sover- 
 [ eign. No monarch of England ever surpassed Elizabeth 
 in firmness, penetration, and address ; and none ever conducted the 
 government with more uniform success. Yet her political maxims 
 were arbitrary in the extreme ; and she had little regard for the lib- 
 erties of her people, or the privileges of parliament believing that 
 her subjects were entitled to no other rights than their ancestors had 
 enjoyed. The principles of the English constitution were not yet 
 developed. Elizabeth died in the year 1603, being then in the sev- 
 entieth year of her age, and the forty-fifth of her reign. 
 
 IV. COTEMPORARY HISTORY. 1. If we pass from European his- 
 tory to that of other portions of the world in the sixteenth century, 
 the most prominent events that attract our notice are the establish 
 ment of the Portuguese in Southern Asia, and of the Spaniards in 
 Mexico and South America, the rise of a Mogul empire in India, 
 and of a new dynasty in Persia. After the fleet of De Gama had 
 doubled the Cape of Good Hope, the enterprises of the Portuguese 
 were directed to the securing of the commerce of the Indian seas ; but, 
 soon after, under the Viceroyalty of the illustrious Albuquerque, 
 they formed numerous settlements and established forts and trading 
 houses throughout all the coasts. In the year 1507 Al- 
 
 I. THE TOR- _ 
 
 TUGUESE buquerque took possession ot (Jrmus, then the most 
 COLONIAL splendid and polished city of Asia, situated at the en- 
 trance of the Persian Gulf ; and when the king of Persia , 
 
 1. Ormus, anciently called Oiyris, is a rocky island at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. It 
 would scarcely be worth notice were it not for its former celebrity and importance. Before the 
 appearance of the Portuguese in the East it was a great emporium, being the centre of the 
 trade of the Persian Gulf, and of the contiguous countries, and possessing great wealth. The 
 Portuguese held it till 1C22, when it was wrested from them by Shah Abbas, assisted by an 
 English fleet. The booty acquired by the captors on this occasion is said to have amounted to two 
 millions sterling. This once rich and flourishing emporium is now in a state of irrsparable decay.
 
 CHAP. III.] SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 349 
 
 to whom it had long belonged, demanded tribute from the Portu- 
 guese, the viceroy pointing to his cannons and balls, replied : " There 
 is the coin with -flinch the king of Portugal pays tribute." The at- 
 tempts of the Venetians and Mohammedans to expel the intruders 
 vere ineffectual, and in 1510, Goa, 1 the chief of the Portuguese es- 
 tablishments, was made the capital of the Portuguese empire in 
 India. The Portuguese introduced themselves into China also ; and 
 when their colonial empire was at its greatest extent, it embraced 
 the coasts of Africa from Guinea to the Red Sea, and extended 
 over all Southern and Eastern Asia ; although throughout this vast 
 extent of country, they had little more than a chain of factories and 
 forts. On the union of Portugal with Spain (1580), the Portuguese 
 East India possessions followed the fate of the mother country, and 
 passed into the unskilful hands of the Spaniards (1582); but when 
 the intolerable cruelty of the Spanish government had driven the 
 Dutch to revolt, the latter extended their commerce to the Indies, 
 and, at the close of the century, had possession of nearly all that had 
 formed the colonial empire of the Portuguese. 
 
 2. The Spaniards were more successful in making and retaining 
 conquests in the New World. Soon after the discovery n SPAXISH 
 of America they extended their settlements over the COLONIAL 
 islands of the West Indies, which were depopulated by 
 
 the excessive and unhealthy labor imposed by them upon the na- 
 tives. In 1519 the adventurer Cortez landed with a small force on 
 the eastern coast of Mexico ; and in the course of two years the 
 wealthy and populous kingdom of the Montezumas was reduced to a 
 province of Spain. Yet, after all his services to his country, Cortez, 
 like Columbus, was persecuted at home. It was with difficulty that 
 he could gain an audience from the emperor, Charles V. When one 
 day he pushed through the crowd which surrounded the coach of the 
 emperor, and placed his foot on the step of the door, Charles asked 
 who this man was. " It is he," replied Cortez, " who has given you 
 more kingdoms than your ancestors left you cities." 
 
 3. After Mexico, the Spaniards sought other countries to conquer 
 and depopulate. In 1532 Pizarro, a soldier of fottune, taking with 
 him a force of only t\*> hundred and fifty foot soldiers, sixty horse- 
 
 1. Goa, ^the old town,) is on an island of the same name on the south-western coast of Hin- 
 dostan, two hundred and fifty miles south-east from Hotnbay. The old city, now almost de- 
 serted except by priests, is " a citj of churches ; and the wealth of provinces seems to have 
 been expended in their erection." New Goa, built on the sea-shore about five miles from the 
 old town, is a well-built city, with a population of about twenty thousand.
 
 350 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET IL 
 
 men, and tw3lvt small cannon, invaded Peru, the greatest, the best 
 governed, and most civilized nation of the New World. Pizarro 
 and his companions marked their route with blood ; but wherever 
 they directed their course they conquered in the name of Charles 
 V. ; and before the close of the century the Spanish empire in 
 America embraced the islands of the West Indies, all Mexico and 
 Peru, and the coasts of nearly all South America. The enormous 
 quantity of the precious metals which Spain drew from her American 
 possessions contributed to make her, for awhile, the preponderating 
 power in Europe ; but an inordinate thirst for the gold and silver of 
 America led the Spaniards to neglect agriculture and manufactures. 
 The Spanish colonies increased but slowly in population ; the capital 
 itself was ruined ; and before the close of the sixteenth century the 
 best days of Spain were over. 
 
 4. During the three hundred years previous to 1525, India, or 
 Hindostan, was governed by Affghan princes, whose seat 
 MOGUL EM- of government was Delhi. In 1525, Baber, the fifth in 
 FIRE IN descent from Tamerlane, and sovereign of a little princi- 
 pality between Kashgar 1 and Samarcand, entered Hin- 
 dostan at the head of a large army, defeated and killed the last 
 Affghan sovereign, and seated himself on the throne of Delhi. 3 With 
 him began the race of Mogul princes, as they are called by Eu- 
 ropeans, although their native tongue was Turkish. In the next cen- 
 tury the Mogul empire was consolidated under Aurungzebe, who, by 
 murdering his relatives, and shutting his father up in his harem, was 
 enabled to ascend the throne of Hindostan in 1 659. But notwithstand- 
 ing the means by which he had obtained sovereign authority, he gov- 
 erned with much wisdom, consulted the welfare of his people, watched 
 over the preservation of justice, and the purity of manners, and, by 
 a wise administration, sought to confirm his own power. After his 
 death, in 1707, the Mogul empire began to decline; and even under 
 
 1. Kashgar, the most western town of any importance in the Chinese empire, is about four 
 hundred and fifty miles east from Samarcand. It was a celebrated commercial city before the 
 Christian era, and, under several dynasties, it long formed an independent kingdom. The 
 Chinese obtained possession of it about the middle of the eighteenth century. 
 
 2. Delhi is a city of northern Hindostan, about eight hundred^ind thirty miles north-west from 
 Calcutta. It appears that no less than seven successive cities have stood on the ground occupied 
 by Delhi : .nd its ruins. De hi was the residence of the Hindoo rajahs before 1193, when it was 
 conquers by the Affghans, In 1398 Delhi was taken and plundered by Tamerlane ; in 1525 
 by Baber; in 173G tho Mahra'Aas burned the pnburbs, and in 1739 Delhi was entered and pil- 
 laged bj Nadir Shah, inct i803 it has, together with its territory, virtually belonged to the 
 British.
 
 CHAP. III.] SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 351 
 
 Aurungzebe it was much inferior, in extent and resources, to the em- 
 pire now held by Britain in the same country. 
 
 5. We have already alluded to the revival of the Persian empire 
 at the beginning of the sixteenth century. At that period we find 
 the youthful Ismael, who traced his descent to the Sheik ^ THE 
 Suffee, a holy person who lived in the time of Tamer- PERSIAN 
 lane, heading a band of adherents against a neighboring 
 prince, and, in the course of four years, reducing all Persia to his 
 sway. For fifteen years fortune smiled on his arms ; but he was at 
 length defeated by Selim, the sultan of Constantinople. The latter, 
 however, reaped no real advantage from his dearly-bought victory ; 
 and when Ismael died he left a name on which the Persians dwell 
 with enthusiasm, as the restorer of their country, and the founder 
 of one of the most brilliant of the Mohammedan dynasties called 
 the Suffcean, or Suffaveari, from the holy sheik SufFee. 
 
 6 Tarn asp succeeded his father Ismael, when only ten years of 
 age. His reign was long and prosperous. Anthony Jeukinson, one 
 of the earliest adventurers to Persia, visited the court of Tamasp as 
 an envoy from queen Elizabeth ; but the intolerance of the Moham- 
 medan soon drove the Christian away. The three sons of Tamasp 
 in succession made an effort for the crown ; but their short reigns 
 merit little notice. At length, in 1582, the youthful Abbas, a 
 grandson of Tamasp, was proclaimed king by some of the discontent- 
 ed nobles, and forced to appear in arms against his father Moham- 
 med, who was deserted by his army, and is not mentioned again in 
 history. But Abbas did not long remain a tool in the hands of 
 others, for, seizing the reigns of power, he soon rose to distinction, 
 defeated the Turks in many battles, in 1622 took Ormuz from the 
 Portuguese, and became supreme ruler of a mighty empire. During 
 nis reign commenced an amicable intercourse between the English 
 and Persian nations, which continued for many years. 
 
 7. Abbas was, in many respects, an enlightened prince : his foreign 
 policy was generally liberal, and he extended toleration to other re- 
 ligions : he spent his revenues in improvements : caravanseras, 
 bridges, aqueducts, bazaars, mosques, and colleges, arose in every 
 quarter ; and Ispahan 1 the capital was splendidly embellished. Bat 
 
 1. Ispahan, formerly the capital of Persia, is situated between the Caspian Sea and the Persian 
 Gulf, two hundred and eleven miles south of Teheran, the modern capital. Although Ispahan 
 has now a population of over one hundred thousand, yet it presents to the traveller, in its 
 buildings at least, little beyond the magnificent ruins of its former greatness. Under the reign 
 of Shah Abbas, Ispahan was the emporium of the Asiatic world. The city was at that time
 
 352 MODERN HISTORY. [PART T 
 
 as a parent, and relative, the character of Abbas appears in a rnos 
 revolting light. He had four sons, on whom he doated as long aa 
 they were children, but when they grew up toward manhood they 
 became objects of jealousy, if not of hatred : their friends were con- 
 sidered as his enemies ; and praises of them were as a knell to his 
 Boul. The eldest was assassinated, and the eyes of the rest put out, 
 by order of their inhuman parent. Horrid tragedies were of fre- 
 quent occurrence in the harem of this Eastern tyrant. Yet such is 
 the king whom the Persians most admire ; and so precarious is the 
 nature of despotic power in Persia, that monarchs of a similar char- 
 acter alone have successfully ruled the nation. When this monarch 
 ceased to reign, Persia ceased to prosper. 
 
 8. Abbas was succeeded by a series of imbecile tyrants, and in 
 1722 the country was overrun by the Affghans, who, during seven 
 wretched years, converted the fairest provinces of Persia into deserts, 
 her cities into charnel houses, and destroyed the lives of a million 
 of her people. At length the famous Kouli Khan, a brigand chief, 
 was raised to the throne with the title of Nadir Shah. He distin- 
 guished himself alike by his victories and his ferocity ; but being 
 assassinated in 1743, his death was followed by a long-continued 
 civil war. The most noted of the Persian monarchs since the death 
 of Nadir Shah have been the eunuch Mehemet Khan, Futteh Ali 
 Shah, and Abbas Mirza, the latter of whom ascended the throne in 
 1835. 
 
 twenty-four miles in circuit, and contained a million of people. Its bazaars were filled with 
 merchandize from every quarter of the globe, mingled with rich bales of its own celebrated 
 manufactures ; and the Shah's court was the resort of ambassadors from the proudest kingdom* 
 of the East, and from Europe also.
 
 CHAP. IV.J SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 353 
 
 X 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 I. THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. German history from 1558 to 1618. The events that led to the"Thi!ty 
 Years' War." Extent of that war. 2. Ferdinand succeeds Matthias as emperor of Germany, 
 but is deposed in Bohemia. Frederic the elector-palatine. THK PALATINK PERIOD OF THK 
 WAR. [Prague.] 3. Mansfeldt is unable to cope with the imperial generals. Protestant alli- 
 ance with the Danes, and opening of the DANISH PERIOD OF THE WAR. Defeat of the Danish 
 ting by Tilly. [Lutter. Giittingen. Brunswick.] 4. The Danes are driven from Hungary, 
 and most of Denmark is conquered. Ambitious views of Ferdinand. Siege of Slralsuncl. 
 Treaty of Lubec. [Stralsund. Lubec.] 5. The hopes of a general peace. Tyranny of Ferdi- 
 nand, and revolt of the Protestants. Interposition of Gustavus Adolphus, and opening of the 
 SWEDISH PERIOD OF THE WAU 6. Intrigues of Richelieu, -leading to the invasion of Germany 
 by the Swedes in 1030. [Rochelle.] 7. Contempt in which the Swedes were held by the Ger 
 mans. [Pomerania.] Character of the opposing forces. The military system of Gustavus. 8. 
 Early successes of the Swedes. Magdeburg plundered and burned by the imperialists. [Mag- 
 deburg.] 9. Compensation for the loss of Magdeberg. [Leipsic.] Gustavus overruns Ger- 
 many. Death of Tilly. 10. Successes of Walleustein. [Nuremburg. Dresden.] Death of 
 Guslavus. [Lutzen.] 11. Close of the Swedish period of the war, and death of Wallenstein. 
 The FRENCH PEIUOD or THE WAR. 12. Circumstances of the leaguing of the French with the 
 Protestants. The Rhine becomes the chief seat of the war. 13. The remainder of the Thirty 
 Years' War. Death of Ferdinand. Death of Louis XIII. and Richelieu. Treaty of Westphalia 
 TWestphalia.] Condition of Germany. 14. Chief articles of the treaty of Westphalia. 
 
 II. ENGLISH HISTORY: THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 
 
 1. England during the period of the Thirty Years' War. UNION OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 
 1603. 2. The character of JAMES I., and the character of his reign. 3. His successor CHARLES 
 I. His misfortunes. 4. Difficulties that immediately followed his accession. The second and 
 third parliament. Dissolution of the latter. 5. The interval until the assembling of another 
 parliament. Conduct of the English clergy, and persecution of the puritans. SCOTCH REBEL- 
 LION. March of the Covenanters into England. Fourth and fifth parliament. 6. Opening acts 
 of THE LONG PARLIAMENT. Impeachment of Stratford and Land. Remarks. 7. Continued 
 encroachments of Parliament. Irish rebellion. Impeachment of five members of the Com- 
 mons. 8. The king erects his standard at Nottingham, and opens the CIVIL WAR 1642. [Not- 
 tingham.] Strength of the opposing parties. 3. The battles of Edghill and Newbery. [Edg- 
 hill. Newbery.] 10. THK SCOTCH LEAGUE. 11. Campaigns of 1644 and 1645. [Marstoa- 
 Moor. Naseby.] The king a prisoner. 12. Civil and religious dissensions. OLIVER CROM- 
 WELL. 13. Tho reaction in favor of the king arrested by Cromwell. TRIAL AND EXECUTION 
 OF CHARLES I. 1649. 14. Remarks upon this measure. Character of Charles. 15. ABOLITION 
 OF MONARCHY. Cromwell's military successes. [Worcester.] 16. WAR WITH HOLLAND 
 Navigation act. Naval battle. 17. Continuance of the war, and defeat of the British. [Good 
 win Sands.] Bravado of Tromp. 18. Defeat of the Dutch in the English Channel. The final 
 conflict, and death of Tromp. Peace with Holland. 19. Controversy between Cromwell and 
 Parliament, THE PROTECTORATE. 20. Continued dissensions and parliamentary opposition 
 to Cromwell. The army. War with Spain. '21. Character of Cromwell's administration. At- 
 icmpt to invest him with the dignity of king. 22. Remainder of Cromwell's life. His death. 
 23. Richard. His abdication. Anarchy. RESTORATION OF MONARCHY, 1660. 24. First Im- 
 pression! produced by Charles II. His character. The parliament of 166!. 25. Manners and 
 
 23
 
 354 MODERN HISTORY. [?ABT II 
 
 morals of the na :ion. 9>. Increasing discontent. War with Holland. The capi I al threatened. 
 [Dunkirk. Cha'.ham.] 27. The plague of 1665. The great fire of 166628. Treaty of Breda. 
 [Breda. New Netherlands. Acadia and Nova Scotia.] Another war with Holland. Treaty 
 ofNimeguen. [Orange. NimcRuen.] 29. The professions .and the secret designs of Charles. 
 His intrigues with the French monarch. His growing unpopulaiity. Popish plot. Russell and 
 Sidney. Absolute power of the king. His death. 30. JAMES II. His general policy. The 
 approaching crisis. 31. Arbitrary and unpopular measures of the king. [Windsor.] 32. 
 Monmouth's rebellion. The inhuman Jeffries. 33. Events of the REVOLUTION OF 1688. 34. 
 Settlement of the crown on William and Mary. Declaration of rights. 35. Scotch and Irish 
 rebellion. [Killiecrankie.] Events that led to a general European war. French history towards 
 the close of the century. Death of William, 170-,!. 
 
 III. FRENCH HISTORY : WARS OF LOUIS XIV. 
 
 1. The ADMINISTRATION OF CARDINAL RICHELIEU, 1624 42. 2. MAZARIN'S ADMINISTRA. 
 TION, 1642 61. Treaty of Westphalia, and war of the Fronde. 3. Continuance of the war be- 
 tween France and Spain. Conde and Turenne.. England joins France in the war. [Arras. 
 "Valenciennes. Flanders.] 4. Both France and Spain desirous of peace. Treaty of the Pyren- 
 ees, 1659. [Bidassoa. Gravelines. Roussillon. Franche-Comte.] 5. Louis assumes the 
 administration of government. [Louvre. Invalides. Versailles. Languedoc.] 6. Ambitious 
 projects of Louis. His invasion of the Spanish Netherlands. [Brabant.] 7. Capture of 
 Franche-Comte. Triple alliance against Louis. Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. [Aix-la-Chapelle.] 
 8. Designs of Louis against Holland. 9. The bayonet. Comparative strength of the French 
 and Dutch forces. 10. Invasion of Holland. [Amsterdam.] The inhabitants think of aban- 
 doning their country. Prince William of Orange effects a general league against the French 
 monarch. (1674.) 11. The war in the Spanish Netherlands. Turenne and Condo. Duquesne. 
 12. Peace of Nimeguen, 1678. Remarks of Voltaire. 13. Great prosperity and increasing 
 ascendancy of France. The greatest glories of the reign of Louis. 14. Madame de Maintenon. 
 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. 15. General league, and war, against Louis, 1636 8. His 
 activity in meeting his enemies. 16. Successes of the French commanders. Battle of La 
 Hogue. [Beachy Head. Namur. La Hogue.] 17. Campaign of 1693. Peace of Ryswick, 
 1697. State of France at the close of the seventeenth century. [Nerwinden. Ryswick. 
 Strasburg.] 
 
 IV. COTEMPORARY HISTORY. 
 
 1. Increasing extent of the field of history. 2. DENMARK, SWEDES, AND NORWAY. Gustavus 
 Adolphiis, and his successors. 3. POLAND, during the seventeenth century. The reign of John 
 Sobieski, 1674 97. His victories over the Turks. [Kotzim]. 4. Siege of Vienna by the 
 Turks and Hungarians. [Vienna.] 5. Its deliverance by Sobieski, 1683. 6. Complete dis- 
 comfiture of the Turks. Ingratitude of Austria, and decline of Poland. 7. RUSSIA, at the 
 commencement of the seventeenth century. Peter the Great. His efforts for improving the 
 condition of his people and country. [Azof. Dwina. Volga. St. Petersburg.] 8. His travels, 
 &c. Political acts of his reign. 9. TURKEY from the early part of the sixteenth to the latter 
 part of the seventeenth century. Decline of her power at the close of the century. [Zenta. 
 Carlowitz. Transylvania. Sclavonia. Podolia. Ukraine.] 10. ITALY during the seventeenth 
 century. Effects of the Reformation. Of the Spanish rule in Italy. ll. The low state of 
 morals. General suffering and degradation. 12. The SPANISH PENINSULA during the seven- 
 teenth century. Expulsion of the Moors, 1610. 13. Revolt of Portugal, 1640. Independence 
 of Holland, 1648. Treaty of Westphalia, 1648. 14. THE ASIATIC NATIONS during the seven- 
 teenth century. Persia. China. 15. The great Mogul empire of Asia. Aurungzebe. 16. CO- 
 LONIAL ESTABLISHMENTS. Dutch colonies. [Surinam. Moluccas. Ceylon.] Colonial policy 
 of the Dutch. 17. Spanish colonial empire. 13. Materials and chancier of Spanish colonial 
 history. 19. French colonization in the New World. In the Old. [Madagascar. Pondicherry.] 
 20. English colonial possessions. The London East India Company. Tava. Madras. Bom- 
 bay. Calcut.a.] 21. English colonization in America. History of the British American colo- 
 nies during >he seventeenth century. The early colonists of New England. 22. Instructive 
 *nd Interesting character of early American history. Omission of a separate compend of 
 Vmerican histo in this work.
 
 CIUP. IV.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 355 
 
 1. THE THIRTY FEARS' WAR.!. From the death of Charles V. 
 in the year 1558, to the year 1618, there were no events in German 
 history that exercised any important influence on the politics of 
 Europe. At the latter period, however, the German emperor, 
 Matthias, succeeded in procuring the subordinate crown of Bohemia 
 for his cousin Ferdinand, a bigoted Catholic ; a circumstance which 
 increased the hostile feelings that had long existed between the Ro- 
 man Catholic and Protestant parties in Bohemia ; but when Ferdi- 
 nand banished the new faith from his dominion, and destroyed the 
 Protestant churches, his impolitic conduct led to an open revolt of 
 his Protestant subjects. (1618.) This was the commencement of a 
 thirty years' war the last conflict sustained by the Reformation a 
 war indeterminate in its objects, but one which, before its close, in- 
 volved, in its complicated relations, nearly all the states of continental 
 Europe. 
 
 2. While this petty war was raging on the narrow theatre of the 
 Bohemian territory, Matthias died ; and Ferdinand, to the great 
 alarm of the Protestant party throughout Germany, was elected em- 
 peror of all the German States, under the title of Ferdinand II. 
 (1619) ; but at the very moment of his election he received the in- 
 telligence of his deposition in Bohemia, which had just been made 
 public among the people. The Bohemians now chose Frederic, the 
 elector -palatine, son-in-law of the British monarch James I., for their 
 sovereign ; but Frederic was unequal to the crisis, and r PALATINE 
 being besieged in his own capital, he lost the battle of PERIOD OF 
 Prague 1 by his negligence or cowardice. Ferdinand, as- raK WAS ~ 
 sisted by a Spanish force under Spinola, and by the Catholic league 
 of Germany, now overran Bohemia, and compelled Frederic to seek 
 refuge in Holland, where he dwelt without a kingdom, and without 
 courage to reconquer it, maintained at the expense of his father- 
 in-law, the king of England. The punishment inflicted upom Bohe- 
 mia was severe in the extreme : twenty-seven of the Protestant lead 
 ers were condemned to death ; by degrees all Protestant clergyman 
 were banished from the country ; and, finally, it was declared that 
 no subject who did not adhere to the Roman Catholic church would 
 be tolerated. Thirty thousand families, driven away by this cruel 
 
 1. Prague, the capital citj- of Bohemia, is situated on both sides of the Moldau, a branch of 
 the Elbe, one hundred and fffty-two miles north-west of Vienna, and seventy-two miles south- 
 cast from Dresden. Jerome, the friend of the great Bohemian reformer John Huss, was a iia'-iv* 
 of this city, and was thence surnamed, " of Prague." (Map No. XVII.)
 
 356 MODERN HISTORY [PAUT IL 
 
 edict, took refuge in the Protestant States of Saxony and Branden- 
 burg. Thus closed the Palatine period of the thirty years ' war. 
 
 3. After the flight of Frederic, his general Mansfeldt still deter 
 mined to maintain the Protestant cause against the emperor Ferdi- 
 nand but he found himself unable to cope with the imperial gen- 
 erals, Tilly and Wallenstein. The Protestant towns of Lower Saxony, 
 foreseeing the fate to which they might be subjected, next took up 
 arms, and having entered into an alliance with Christian IV. of Den- 
 mark, made him captain general of the confederated 
 
 IT. DANISH r O 
 
 PERIOD OF army. (1625.) Thus opened the Danish period of the 
 THE WAK. war With a body of twenty-five thousand men, consist- 
 ing of Danes, G-ernians, Scotch, and English, the Danish king crossed 
 the Elbe, where he was joined by seven thousand Saxons ; but, after 
 some successes, he was defeated by Tilly near the castle of Lutter, 1 
 on the road from Gottingen 2 to Brunswick, 3 with the loss of four 
 thousand men, besides a vast number of prisoners. (Aug. 26th, 1626.) 
 
 4. In the following year, 1627, the Danes were driven from Ger- 
 many by Wallenstein, the imperial commander, who had now in- 
 creased his forces to one hundred thousand men. Not content with 
 driving Christian from Germany, Wallenstein pursued him into 
 Denmark ; and soon the whole of the peninsula, with the exception 
 of one fortress, was conquered, and the king was obliged to take 
 refuge in his islands. The ambitious views of Ferdinand now aimed 
 at the extirpation of the Lutheran heresy throughout his own empire, 
 and the reestablishment of the Catholic faith throughout the entire 
 north, by the subjugation of Norway and Sweden, in addition to 
 Denmark. As a preliminary step towards the accomplishment 
 of this gigantic undertaking, Wallenstein was first to secure the 
 dominion of the Baltic and the North Sea. Assisted by a Spanish 
 fleet, he took possession of several ports on the Baltic ; but the citi- 
 zens of Stralsund/ aided by five thousand Swedish and Scottish 
 troops, defended their walls with such determined courage and per- 
 severance, that Wallenstein was forced to abandon the siege, after a 
 
 1. Lutter, "near Barenberg, in Hanover," south-west from Brunswick. This battle was 
 fought Aug. 26th, 1026. 
 
 4 i Gottingen, in the kingdom of Hanover, is fifty-six miles south-west from Brunswick. It it 
 especially noted for its university, which, down to 1831, was fully entitled to its appellation 
 " the queen of German universities." (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. Brunswick, the early seat of the dukes of that name, is a city of Germany, situated on the 
 Ocker, a branch of the Weser, thirty-seven miles a little south of east from Hanover. (Map 
 No. XVII.) 
 
 4. Stral.iund is a strongly-fortified Prussian town, on the narrow strait of the Baltic which 
 eparates the island of Rugen from the continent. (Map No. XVII.)
 
 CHAP. IV.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 357 
 
 loss of twelve thousand men. This signal discomfiture induced the 
 emperor to consent to treat for peace with Denmark ; and by the 
 treaty of Lubec, 1 Christian was restored to his dominions, on the 
 condition of abandoning his German allies. (May, 1629.) Thus 
 terminated the Danish period of the thirty years' war. 
 
 5. It had been hoped that the treaty of Lubec would prove the 
 forerunner of a general pacification ; and the subjects, the allies, and 
 the enemies of Ferdinand, now united in imploring him to put an 
 end to a civil war which had been waged with a ferocity hitherto un- 
 known since the ages of Gothic barbarism. But, the Protestants 
 being subdued, and no enemy left to oppose the emperor, the Roman 
 Catholics thought the moment too favorable to be neglected, and 
 Ferdinand was urged on by them to exercise the most intolerable 
 tyranny over his Protestant subjects. The last beam of hope from 
 the emperor's clemency w.as extinguished, and the Protestants only 
 awaited the arrival of a leader to throw off a yoke which m SWEDIgH 
 had become insupportable. A deliverer was found in PERIOD OF 
 Gustavus Adolphus, the Protestant king of Sweden. The THE WAR> 
 circumstances that led to his interposition, the opening of the 
 Swedish period of the war show how tangled has often been the 
 web of European politics. 
 
 6. Cardinal Richelieu, the able minister of Louis XIII. of 
 France, after having humbled the Huguenots by the capture of Ro- 
 chelle, 2 their last stronghold, directed his great powers to the abase- 
 ment of the house of Austria. With this view he was instrumental 
 iu depriving Ferdinand of his ablest general, Wallenstein, whose 
 dismissal from power was successfully urged by an assembly of the 
 German States in the summer of 1630. Richelieu had previously 
 
 1. />uifc, the capital of the " Hanseatic towns," is situated on the river Trave, about twelve 
 miles from its entrance into the Baltic, and thirty-six miles north-east from Hamburg. The 
 surrounding territory subject to Lubec consists of a district of about eighty square miles. (Map 
 No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Rochelle is a town and seaport of France on the Atlantic coast, in the former province of 
 Saint onge, seventy-six miles south-east from Nantes. During the religious wars, and especially 
 after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, Rochelle was a stronghold of the Proteslants. Invested 
 by the Catholic forces in 1572, it withstood a long siege, terminated by a treaty. The numerous 
 infractions of that treaty, in the reign of Louis XIII., and under the ministry of Richelieu, led 
 to a second siege, which commenced in August, 1027, and was as violent as the former, and 
 longer and more decisive. After six months of heroic resistance, the famous engineer, Mete- 
 zeau, was directed to bar the entrance to the harbor by an immense Avke, extending nearly 
 five thousand feet into the sea, the remains of which are still visible at k w water. The result 
 was soon fatally apparent. Famine quickly decimated the ranks of the besieged ; and after a 
 resistance sf fourteen months and eighteen days, Rochelle was compelled to capitulate. Riche- 
 lieu niflde a triumphant entry into the city ; the fortifications were demolished, and trie Pro- 
 testants were deprived of their last place of refuge. (Map No. XIII.)
 
 358 MODERN HISTORY. [Pm II 
 
 offered his successful mediation in negotiating a six years' armistice 
 between the hostile States of Sweden and Poland, with the view of 
 leaving Gustavus Adolphus, the Swedish king, at liberty to turn his 
 arms against the German emperor. All the inducements that an 
 artful diplomatist could urge were brought to bear upon Gustavus, a 
 prince ardent in the Protestant faith, and already a sufferer from 
 the insoleuce and rapacity of Wallenstein ; and the result was a dec- 
 laration of war against the German emperor, and an invasion of his 
 territory by the Swedes, in the summer of 1630. 
 
 7. When Ferdinand was informed that the Swedish monarch had 
 landed in Pomerania 2 at the head of only fifteen thousand men, he 
 treated the affair with much indifference; and the Roman Catholic 
 party throughout the empire styled Gustavus, in contempt, the petty 
 snow king, who, they said, would speedily melt beneath the rays of 
 the imperial sun. But while the German armies were a motley of 
 all creeds and nations, bound together only by the ties of a common 
 warfare and pillage, the Swedes formed a phalanx of hardy and well- 
 disciplined warriors, strengthened by the confidence that God was on 
 their side ; and to Him they offered up their prayers twice a day, 
 each regiment having its own chaplain. Besides this, Gustavus had 
 introduced a new system of military tactics into his army ; and by 
 the novelty and boldness of his positions, and the impetuosity of his 
 movements, he completely disconcerted the adherents of the old Ger- 
 man routine. 
 
 8. Although some of the Protestant princes of Germany, through 
 fear of their emperor, or from jealousy of foreign dominion, hesi- 
 tated about joining the new ally of their cause, yet the onset of the 
 Swedes was irresistible : they rapidly made themselves masters of all 
 Pomerania, and took Frankfort under the eye of the imperial gen- 
 eral Tilly ; but they were unable to relieve Magdeburg, 2 which Tilly 
 plundered and burned, amid scenes of the most revolting atrocity 
 an act which rendered his name infamous among all classes of the 
 Gorman population. 
 
 9. The unfortunate loss of Magdeburg was speedily compensated 
 
 1. Pomerania is a large province of Prussia, extending east from Mecklenberg about two 
 hundred miles along the southern coast of the Baltic. Gustavus landed on the islands Wollen 
 and Usedorn, south-east of Stralsund. The first towns reduced by him were Wolgast and 
 Stettin. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Magdeburg is a strongly-fortified city, and the capital of Prussian Saxony, situated on the 
 Elbe, seventy-four miles south-west from Berlin. Magdeburg has suffered numerous sieges, but 
 '.ta fortifications are now so extensive that it is said it would require fifty thousand men to in- 
 vest it. It was plundered and burned by Tilly, May 12th. 1531. (Map No. XVII.)
 
 CHAT. IV.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 359 
 
 by formidable accessions of strength received from France and Eng- 
 land, and by a great victory gained by Gustavus over Tilly in the 
 vicinity of Leipsic. 1 (Sept. 7th, 1631.) Gustavus now rapidly 
 traversed Germany from the Elbe to the Rhine, pursuing his victo- 
 rious career to the borders of Switzerland : all northern and western 
 Germany, together with Bohemia, were in the hands of the Protest- 
 ants ; and early in the following year Tilly himself was slain on the 
 banks of the river Lech, a southern tributary of the Danube, in Ba- 
 varia. 
 
 10. Ferdinand now saw no alternative, in his sinking fortunes, but 
 to call the great and proud Wallenstein from retirement. His res- 
 toration at once gave a new direction to the war. He quickly seized 
 Prague, and restored Bohemia to his sovereign ; and Gustavus was 
 now obliged to retire within the walls of Nuremberg 2 until he could 
 rally his troops, which were scattered over Germany. After a tedious 
 blockade of Nuremberg, in which both parties lost thirty thousand 
 soldiers by famine and the sword, Wallenstein made a sudden move- 
 ment towards Dresden ; 3 but the advance of Gustavus thwarted his 
 plans and brought on that fatal action in which the Swedish hero lost 
 his life. On the 16th of November, 1632, the two armies met at 
 Lutzen ; 4 but scarcely had the battle commenced when Gustavus, 
 throwing himself before the enemy's ranks, fell pierced by two balls. 
 After a desperate engagement the Protestants triumphed ; but the 
 glory of their victory was dearly bought by the death of their leader. 
 
 1. Leipsic is a celebrated commercial city of the kingdom of Saxony, sixty miles north-west 
 from Dresden. It is a manufacturing town of considerable importance, and is the greatest 
 book emporium in the world. In Oct. 1813, Leipsic was the scene of a most tremendous con- 
 flict between Napoleon and the allies, in which the French, greatly inferior in numbers, were 
 repulsed with a heavy loss. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Nuremberg is a ciiy of Bavaria, ninety-three miles north-west from Munich. It is sur- 
 rounded by feudal walls and turrets, and these are inclosed by a ditch one hundred feet wide 
 and fifty feet deep, lined throughout with masonry. Nuremberg is celebrated in the history of 
 the Reformation, having early embraced its doctrines. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. Dresden, the capital of the kingdom of Saxony, is situated on the Elbe, one hundred 
 miles south-east from Berlin, and two hundred and thirty north-west from Vienna. Population 
 mostly Protestant. It has a great number of literary and scientific institutions, and establish- 
 ments devoted to education. Dresden and its environs have been the scene of some of the 
 most important conflicts in modern warfare, particularly on the 26th and 27th of August, 1813, 
 when Napoleon defeated the allies under its walls. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 4. Lutzen is a small town of Prussian Saxony, twelve miles south-west from Leipsic. It 
 would be unworthy of notice were it not that its environs have been the scene of two of the 
 most memorable conflicts of modern times-, the first,, which occurred Nov. 16th, 1632, and in 
 which the Swedish monarch Gustavus Adolphus fell ; and the second, which took place on 
 nearly the same ground, May 2d, 1813, and in which the French, under Napoleon, defeated the 
 allies, who were encouraged by the presence of the emperor Alexander and the kiug of Prussia. 
 
 o. XVII.)
 
 360 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET U 
 
 11. Thus terminated the Swedish period of the "Thirty years 
 \var ;" for although the Swedes still determined to support the Pro 
 testant cause in Germany, the animating spirit of the war had fled, 
 and they were unable, alone, to accomplish anything effectual. A 
 little more than a year after the fall of G ustavus, Wallenstehi, being 
 
 accused of treason to his master and the Catholic cause, 
 
 IV. FRENCH 
 
 I'KuioD OF was assassinate* by the command of the emperor Fer- 
 THE WAR. (Jinand. (Feb. 1634.) We come now to what has beeu 
 called the French period, embracing the closing scenes of this war. 
 
 12. The French minister, Richelieu, had long observed, with se 
 cret satisfaction, the misfortunes of the house of Austria, and of the 
 Gorman empire generally ; and now he offered the aid of France to 
 the Swedes and the German Protestants, with Holland and the duke 
 of Savoy as allies, on the condition of extending the French frontier 
 over a portion of the German territory ; and thus the persecutor of 
 the Huguenots was leagued with the Protestant powers of Europe 
 against its Roman Catholic princes; "a clear proof," says a writer 
 of French history, " that his principles were politic, not bigoted." 
 In a short time French armies were sent into Italy, Germany, and 
 the Netherlands ; and from this moment the provinces along the 
 Rhine became the chief seat of the war, being pillaged and devas- 
 tated as those along the Oder, Elbe, and "Weser, had been previously. 
 
 13. From the moment of the active interference of France, the 
 power of the German imperialists declined ; and the remainder of 
 this " Thirty years' war," which was marked by an unusual degree 
 of ferocity on both sides, presents a continuation of gloomy and dis 
 heartening scenes, in which Richelieu had the advantage, not from 
 military but diplomatic superiority. Ferdinand died in the year 
 1637, without living to witness the termination of the civil and do- 
 mestic war in which he had been engaged from the commencement 
 of his reign. The French monarch Louis XIII., and his minister 
 Richelieu, the great fomentors and leaders of the war, died in 1642, 
 after which the negotiations for peace, which had been begun as early 
 as 1636, were the more easily concluded; and in October 1648, the 
 treaty of Westphalia 1 closed the sad scene of the long and sanguinary 
 
 1. Westphalia is a province embracing all the northern portion of the Prussian dominions 
 west of the Weser The " peace of Westphalia" was concluded in 1648, at Muns'.er and Osua- 
 burg, both then in Westphalia, but the latter now in Hanover. In 1641 preliminaries were 
 agreed upon at Hamburg : in 1644 actual negotiations were commenced at Osnaburg, between 
 the ambassadors of Austria, the German empire, and Sweden ; and at Minister between thoee 
 of the emperor, France, Spain, and other powers ; but the ai tides adopted in both formed OM
 
 CBAP. IV.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 3bl 
 
 " Thirty years' war." Peace fouud the German States in a sadly- 
 depressed condition ; the scene that was everywhere presented was a 
 wide waste of ruin ; and two-thirds of the population had perished, 
 although not so much by the sword as by contagion, plague, famine, 
 and the other attendant horrors that follow in the train of war. 
 
 14. The chief articles of the treaty of Westphalia were, 1st, the 
 confirmation of the religious peace of Passau, and the consequent 
 establishment of the independence of the Protestant Geniijm powers : 
 2d, the dismemberment of many of the German States for the purpose 
 of indemnifying others for their losses ; and the sanction of the com- 
 plete sovereignty of each of the German States within its own terri- 
 tory : 3d, the extension of the eastern limits of France : 4th, the 
 grant, to Sweden, of a considerable territory on the Baltic coast, to- 
 gether with a subsidy of five millions of dollars ; and 5th, the ac- 
 knowledgment of the independence of the Netherlands by Spain, and 
 of the Swiss cantons by the German empire. 
 
 II. ENGLISH HISTORY : THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. While the 
 " Thirty years' war" was progressing on the continent, leading to the 
 final triumph of religious liberty there, England was convulsed by 
 domestic dissensions, which eventually led to a civil war, and the 
 temporary overthrow of the monarchy. On the death of 
 Elizabeth in 1603, James VI. of Scotland, the son of the EXGLAXD 
 unfortunate Mary, succeeded to the throne of England, AKD 
 with the title of James I. England and Scotland were 
 thus united under one sovereign ; and henceforth the two countries 
 received the common designation of " Great Britain." 
 
 2. The character of James, the first English monarch of the Stuart 
 family, was not calculated to win the affections of his IL 
 subjects. He was as arbitrary as his predecessors of the JAMES i. 
 Tudor race ; and, although excelling in the learning of the times, he 
 was signally deficient in all those noble qualities of a sovereign which 
 command respect and enforce obedience. His imprudence in sur- 
 rounding himself with Scotch favorites irritated the English : the 
 Scotch saw with no greater satisfaction his attempts to subject them 
 to the worship of the English church : some disappointed Roman 
 Catholics formed a conspiracy, which was fortunately detected, to 
 destroy by gunpowder the king and assembled f arliament ; and the 
 
 treaty. After terms had been settled between the parties at Osna'jurg, the ministers repaired 
 to Munsler, where the final treaty was concluded, Oct. 24th, 1(548. (Map No. XVU.) 
 
 R
 
 362 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 puritans, aiming at farther reforms in the church and in the state, 
 were committed to prison for even petitioning for some changes, not 
 in the least inconsistent with the established hierarchy. James 
 strenuously maintained the " Divine right of kings ;" and his entire 
 reign was a continued struggle of the house of commons to restore, 
 and to fortify, their own liberties, and those of the people. 
 
 3. In 1 625 James was succeeded on the throne by his son Charles 
 m r I., then in the twenty -fifth year of his age. Had Charles 
 
 CHARLES i. lived a hundred years earlier, or had not the reformatory 
 spirit of the age introduced great and important changes in the 
 minds of men on the subject of the royal prerogative and the liber- 
 ties of the people, he might have reigned with great popularity; for 
 his stern and serious deportment, his disinclination to all licentious- 
 ness, and a deep regard for religion, were highly suitable to the char- 
 acter of the English people at this period ; but it was the misfortune 
 of Charles to be destitute of that political prudence which should 
 have taught him to yield to the necessities of the times. 
 
 4. The accession of Charles was immediately followed by difficul- 
 ties with his parliament, which had no confidence in the king, and 
 which he suddenly dissolved, because it refused to vote the supplies 
 demanded by him, and sh,owed an inclination to impeach his favorite 
 minister Buckingham. The second parliament proceeded with the 
 impeachment of the minister, (1626,) and the king retaliated by im- 
 prisoning two members of the house on the charge of " words spoken 
 by them in derogation of his majesty's honor ;" but the exasperation 
 of the Commons soon obtained their release. The third parliament, 
 called in 1628, waiving all minor contests, demanded the king's sanc- 
 tion to a " Petition of Right," which set forth the rights of the Eng- 
 lish people as guaranteed to them by the Great Charter, and by 
 various laws and statutes of the realm. Charles, after many evasions, 
 reluctantly signed the Petition ; but in a few months he flagrantly 
 violated the obligations it had imposed upon him, and in a fit of in- 
 dignation dissolved parliament, resolving never again to call another. 
 (162939.) 
 
 5. During an interval of about ten years, and until the assembling 
 of another parliament, no opposition, except such as public opinion 
 interposed, was made to the full enjoyment of the unrestrained pre- 
 rogatives of the king. Monopolies were now revived to a ruinous 
 extent, and the benefits of them were sold to the highest bidder ; ille 
 gal duties were sustained by servile judges; unl.eard-of fines were
 
 CHAP. IV.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 363 
 
 imposed ; and no expedient was omitted that might tend to bring 
 money into the royal treasury, and thus enable the king to rule 
 without the aid of parliament. The English clergy, at the head of 
 whom was archbishop Laud, one of the chief advisers of the king, 
 usurped, by degrees, the civil powers of government ; and the puri 
 tans were so rigorously persecuted that great numbers of them sought 
 an asylum in America. In 1637 the attempts of Charles to intro- 
 duce the Episcopal form of worship into Scotland, drove the Scotch 
 presbyterians to open rebellion ; and a covenant to defend the re. 
 ligion, the laws, and the liberties of their country against 
 every danger, was immediately framed and subscribed IVl S( 
 
 * REBELLION* 
 
 by them. The covenanters, having received arms and 
 money from the French minister Richelieu, marched into England , 
 but the English army refused to fight against their brethren, when 
 the king, finding himself beset with difficulties on every side, was 
 obliged to place himself at the discretion of a fourth parliament. 
 (April 1640.) This parliament, not fully complying with the king's 
 wishes, was abruptly dissolved after a month's session ; but public 
 opinion soon compelled the king to summon another, which assembled 
 in November of the same year. 
 
 6. The new parliament, called the Long Parliament, from the ex- 
 traordinary length of its session, first applied itself dili- v THK 
 gently to the correction of abuses and a redress of griev- LONG PAK- 
 ances. Future parliaments were declared to be triennial ; UAMKNT - 
 many of the recent acts for taxing the people were declared illegal , 
 and monopolies of every kind were abolished the king yielding to 
 all the demands that were made upon him. Not satisfied with these 
 concessions, the commons impeached the earl of Strafford, the king's 
 first minister, and favorite general, accusing him of exercising pow- 
 ers beyond what the crown had ever lawfully enjoyed, and of a sys- 
 tematic hostility to the fundamental laws and constitution of the 
 realm. By the unconstitutional expedient of a bill of attainder, 
 Strafford was declared guilty ; and the king had the weakness to sign 
 his condemnation. (1641.) Archbishop Laud was brought to trial 
 and executed four years later. The severity of the punishment of 
 Strafford, and the magnanimity displayed by him on his trial, have 
 half redeemed his forfeit-fame, and misled a generous posterity ; but 
 he died justly, although the means taken to accomplish his condem- 
 nation, by a departure from the ordinary course of judicial proceed- 
 ings, established a precedent dangerous to civil liberty.
 
 364 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 7. "With a strong hand parliament now virtually took possession 
 of the government ; it declared itself indissoluble without its own 
 consent, and continued to encroach on the prerogatives of the king 
 until scarcely the shadow of his former power was left him. A re- 
 bellion which broke out in Ireland was maliciously charged upon the 
 king as its author ; and Charles, to refute the unworthy suspicion, 
 intrusted the management of Irish affairs to parliament, which the 
 latter interpreted into a transference to them of the whole military 
 power of the kingdom. At length Charles, irritated by a threatening 
 remonstrance on the state of the kingdom, caused five members of 
 the Commons to be impeached ; and went in person to the House to 
 seize them, a fatal act of indiscretion which was declared a breach 
 of privilege of parliament, for which Charles found it necessary to 
 atone by a humiliating message. 
 
 8. The difficulties between the king and parliament, and their re- 
 spective supporters, at length reached such a crisis, that in January 
 
 1642 the king left London, attended by most of his no- 
 vi. civj bility, and, repairing to Nottingham, 1 erected there the 
 royal standard, resolving to stake his claims on the haz- 
 ards of war. The adherents of parliament were not unprepared for 
 the contest. On the side of the king were ranged most of the no 
 bility of the kingdom, together with the Koman Catholics all form 
 ing the high church and monarchy party ; while parliament had on 
 its side the numerous presbyterian dissenters, and all ultra religious 
 and political reformers ; parliament held the seaports, the fleet, the 
 great cities, the capital, and the eastern, middle, and southern 
 counties ; while the royalists had the ascendancy in the north and west. 
 
 9. From 1642 until 1647 the war was carried on with various suc- 
 sess. In the battle of Edghill, 2 fought in October 1642, nothing 
 was decided, although five thousand men were left dead on the 
 field. The battle of Newbury, 3 fought in the following year, (Sept. 
 
 1. Nottingham is a city one hundred and eight miles north-west from London. It was the 
 chief place of rendezvous for the troops of Edward IV. and Richard III. during the wars of 
 the Rose*. Soon after Charles I. raised his standard here in 1642, the inhabitants, who were 
 attached to the republican cause, compelled him to abandon the town and castle to the parlia- 
 mentary forces. (Map No. XVI.) 
 
 2. Edgkill is a small town in the county of Warwick, seventy-two miles north-west from 
 London. (Map No. XVI.) 
 
 3. Newbury is a town in Berks county, England, on the Kennett, a southern branch of the 
 Thames, fifty-three miles south-west from London. The vicinity of this town is celebrated for 
 two battles fought during the civil wars between the royalist and parliamentary forces, diaries 
 I. commanding his army in person on both occasions. The first was fought Sept. 20th, 1643 ; 
 the second, Oct 27th, UU4 ; but neither had any decided result. (Map No. XVI.)
 
 CHAP IV.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 3l>5 
 
 20th, 1643,) was equally indecisive ; but it was attended with such 
 loss on both sides that it put an end to the campaign, by obliging 
 both parties to retire into winter quarters. 
 
 10. Both king and parliament now began to look for assistance to 
 other nations ; and while some Irish Roman Catholics THE 
 joined the royal army, the parliament entered into a SCOTCH 
 
 " Solemn League and Covenant" with the Scotch people, 
 by which the parties to it bound themselves to aid in the extirpation 
 of popery and prelacy, and to promote the establishment of a church 
 government conformed to that of Scotland. The Scots, rejoicing at 
 the prospect thus held out of extending their mode of religion over 
 England, seat an army of twenty thousand men, at the beginning of 
 
 1644, to cooperate with the forces of parliament. 
 
 11. The campaign of 1644 was unfortunate to the royal cause, tho 
 Irish forces being dispersed by Sir Thomas Fairfax, and the royal- 
 ists experiencing a severe defeat at Marston Moor, 1 (2d July,) on 
 which occasion fifty thousand British combatants engaged in mutual 
 slaughter. .In Scotland the royal cause was for a time sustained by 
 the marquis of Montrose ; but the gallant Scot was at length over- 
 whelmed by superior numbers ; and in the following year, June 14th, 
 
 1645, the battle of Naseby,* gained by the parliamentary forces, de- 
 cided the contest against the king, although the useless obstinacy of 
 the royalists protracted the war till the beginning of 1647. a . After 
 the defeat at Naseby, the king, relying on the faith of uncertain 
 promises, threw himself into the hands of his Scotch subjects ; but the 
 latter, treating him as a prisoner, delivered him up to the commission- 
 ers of parliament. 
 
 1 2. The war was now at an end, but civil and religious dissensions 
 raged with greater fury than ever. The late enemies of the king 
 were divided into two factions, the Presbyterians and the Independents, 
 the former having a majority in the parliament, and the latter form- 
 ing a majority of the army. At the head of the Inde- 
 pendent party was Oliver Cromwell, a general of the VIU ' OLIVKa 
 
 . CROMWKLL. 
 
 army, and a man of talent and address, who appears al- 
 
 1. Marston Moor is a small village of Yorkshire, England, seven miles west of the city of 
 York. (Map No. XVI.; 
 
 2. JVaseby is a decayed market town of England, eleven and a-half miles north-west from 
 London. It is twenty-nine miles north-east of the locality of the battle of Edghill. The battle 
 of Naseby was fought north of the town, in the plain that separated Naseby from Harborongh, 
 
 Map No. XVI.) 
 
 a. " Some of the castles of North Wales, the last that surrendered, held out till April 1047."- 
 Hallam's Const. Hist. Note p. 351.)
 
 366 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET IL 
 
 ready to have formed the design of obtaining supreme power. By 
 his orders the king was taken from the commissioners of parliament, 
 and placed in the custody of the army. A proposition of parliament 
 to disband the army gave Cromwell an opportunity to heighten the 
 disaffection of the soldiers ; and, placing himself at their head, he 
 entered London, purged parliament of the members obnoxious to 
 him, and imprisoned all who disputed his authority. 
 
 13. While parliament was suffering under the military domination 
 of Cromwell, a general reaction began to take place in favor of the 
 king. The Scots, ashamed of the reproach of having sold their sover- 
 eign, now took up arms in his favor ; but Cromwell marched against 
 them at the head of an inferior force, and after defeating them, 
 entered Scotland, the government of which he settled entirely to his 
 satisfaction. Parliament also entered into a negotiation with the 
 king, with the view of restoring him to power ; but Cromwell sur 
 rounded the House of Commons with his soldiers, and excluding all 
 but his own partisans, caused a vote to be passed declaring it treason 
 in a king to levy war against his parliament. Under the influence 
 of Cromwell, proposals were now made for bringing the king to trial ; 
 
 and when the few remaining members of the House of 
 AND EXECU- Lords refused their sanction to the measure, the Com- 
 TION OF mons voted that the concurrence of the Lords was un- 
 necessary, and that the people were the origin of all just 
 power. The Commons then named a court of justice, composed 
 mostly of the principal officers of the army, to try the king ; and 
 on the charge of having been the cause of all the bloodshed during 
 the continuance of the war, he was condemned to death. He was 
 allowed only three days to prepare for execution ; and on the 30th 
 of January, 1649, the misguided and unhappy monarch was behead- 
 ed, being, at the time, in the forty-ninth year of his age, and the 
 twenty fourth of his reign. 
 
 14. " The execution of Charles the First," says Hallam, " has been 
 mentioned in later ages by a few with unlimited praise, by some 
 with faint and ambiguous censure, by most with vehement reproba- 
 tion." Viewing the case in all its aspects, we can find no justifica- 
 tion for the deed ; for no considerations of public necessity required 
 it ; and it was, moreover, the act of a small minority of parliament, 
 that had usurped, under the protection of a military force, a power 
 which all England de ilared illegal. Lingard asserts that " the men 
 who hurried Charles to the scaffold were a small faction of bold and
 
 CHAP. IV.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 367 
 
 ambitious spirits, who had the address to guide the passions and fanati- 
 cism of thoir followers, and were enabled, through them, to control the 
 real sentiments of the nation." The arbitrary principles of Charles, 
 which he had imbibed in the lessons of early youth, his passionate 
 temper, and want of sincerity, indeed rendered him unfit for the 
 difficult station of a constitutional king ; but, on the other hand, he 
 was deserving of esteem for the correctness of his moral principles ; 
 and in private life he would not have been an unamiable man. 
 
 15. A few days after the death of Charles, the monarchical form 
 of government was formally abolished ; the House of x ABOLI . 
 Lords fell by a vote of the Commons at the same time ; TION OF 
 the mere shadow of a parliament, known by the appella- * 
 
 tion of the Rump, and supported by an army of fifty thousand men 
 under the controlling influence of Oliver Cromwell, took into its 
 hands all the powers of government ; and the former title of the 
 " English Monarchy" gave place to that of the Commonwealth of 
 England. The royalists being still in considerable force in Ireland, 
 Cromwell repaired thither with an army, and speedily reduced the 
 country to submission ; after which he marched into Scotland at the 
 head of sixteen thousand men, and, in the battle of Dunbar, (Sept. 
 13th, 1650,) defeated the royal covenanters, who had proclaimed 
 Charles II., son of the late king, as their sovereign. In the follow- 
 ing year he pursued the Scotch army into England, and completely 
 annihilated it in the desperate battle of Worcester. 1 (Sept. 13th, 
 1651.) 
 
 16. Cromwell had formed the project of a coalition with Holland, 
 which was to make the two republics one and indivisible ; xi WAR 
 but national antipathies could not be overcome ; and in- WITH 
 stead of the proposed coalition there ensued a fierce and HOLLAND. 
 bloody war. Under pretence of providing for the interests of commerce, 
 the British parliament passed the celebrated navigation act, which 
 prohibited all nations from importing into England, in their ships, 
 any commodity which was not the growth and manufacture of their 
 own country ; a blow aimed directly at the Dutch, who were the 
 general factors and carriers of Europe. Ships were seized and re- 
 prisals made ; and in the month of May, 1652, the war broke out by 
 
 1. Worcester, the capital of Worcester county, England, is on the eastern bank of the river 
 Sevwn, one hundred miles north-west from London. Worcester is of great, but uncertain, 
 antiquity, and is one of the best built towns in the kingdom. It is principally celebrated in 
 history for its giving name to the decisive victory obtained there by Cromwell oa the 13Ui 
 Sept. 1 351. (Map No. XVI.)
 
 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET II 
 
 a casual encounter of the hostile fleets of the two nations, in the 
 straits of Dover, the Dutch admiral Van Tromp commanding the 
 one squadron, and the heroic Blake the other. After five hours' 
 fighting, the Dutch were defeated, with the loss of one ship sunk and 
 another taken. 
 
 17. The States-general of Holland were seriously alarmed at the 
 prospect of a naval war with England, but the English parliament 
 would listen to neither reason nor remonstrance ; and in a short time 
 the fleets of the two nations were at sea again. Several actions took 
 place with various success, but on the 29th of November a deter- 
 mined battle was fought off the Goodwin sands, 1 between the Dutch 
 fleet commanded by Van Tromp and De Ruyter, and the English 
 squadron under Blake. Blake was wounded and defeated ; five Eng- 
 lish ships were taken, or destroyed ; and night saved the fleet from 
 destruction. After this victory, Tromp, in bravado, placed a broom 
 at his mast head, to intimate that he would sweep the English ships 
 from the seas. 
 
 18. Great preparations were made in England to remove this dis- 
 grace ; and in the month of February following (1653) eighty sail, 
 under Blake, assisted by Dean and Monk, met, in the English Chan- 
 nel, the Dutch fleet of seventy-six vessels, commanded by Van Tromp, 
 who was seconded by De Ruyter. Three days of desperate fighting 
 ended in the defeat of the Dutch, although Tromp acquired little 
 less honor than his rival, by the masterly retreat which he con- 
 ducted. In June several battles were fought ; and in July occurred 
 the last of these bloody and obstinate conflicts for naval superiority. 
 Tromp issued forth once more, determined to conquer or die, and 
 soon met the enemy commanded by Monk ; but as he was animat- 
 ing his sailors, with his sword drawn, he was shot through the heart 
 with a musket ball. This event alone decided the action, and 
 the defeat which the Dutch sustained was the most decisive of the 
 whole war. Peace was soon concluded on terms advantageous to 
 England ; and Cromwell, as protector, signed the treaty of pacifica- 
 tion, (April 1654,) after having vainly endeavored to establish a union 
 of government, privileges, and interests, between the two republics. 
 
 19. While the war with Holland was progressing, a controversy 
 
 1. The Goodwin sands are famous and very dangerous sand banks, about four miles from 
 the eastern coast of Kent, a few miles north-east from Dover. They are believed to have once 
 formed part of the Kentish land, and to have been submerged about the end of the reign of 
 William Rufus. The channel between them and the main land is called * the Downs," a cele- 
 brated roadstead for ships, which affords excellent anchorage. (Map No. XVI.)
 
 CHAT. IV.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 369 
 
 had arisen between Cromwell and the army on the .one hand, and 
 the Long Parliament on the other. Each wished to rule supreme, 
 but eventually Cromwell forcibly dissolved the parliament, (April 
 1653,) and soon after summoned another, composed wholly of mem 
 bers of his own selection. The hitter, however, commonly called 
 Barebone's parliament, from the name of one of its leading members, 
 at once commenced such a thorough reformation in every department 
 of the state, as to alarm Cromwell and his associates ; and it was re- 
 solved that these troublesome legislators should be sent back to their 
 respective parishes. A majority of the members voluntarily sur- 
 rendered their power into the hands of Cromwell, -who put an end 
 to the opposition of the rest by turning them out of doors. (Dec. 
 12th, 1653.) Four days later a new scheme of govern- 
 ment, called ' The Protectorate," was adopted, by which PROTECTO- 
 the supreme powers of state were vested in a lord pro- EATK 
 tector, a council, and a parliament ; and Cromwell was solemnly in- 
 stalled for life in the office of " Lord Protector of the commonwealth 
 of England, Scotland, and Ireland." 
 
 20. The parliament summoned by Cromwell to meet in September 
 of the following year, suspecting that the Protector aimed at kingly 
 authority, commenced its session (1654) by an inquiry into the right 
 by which he held his power ; upon which Cromwell plainly informed 
 the members that he would send them to their homes if they did not 
 acknowledge the authority by which they had been assembled. About, 
 three hundred members signed a paper recognizing Cromwell's scheme 
 of government ; while the remainder, amounting to a hundred and 
 sixty, resolutely refused compliance, and were excluded from their 
 seats ; but although parliament was in some degree purged by the 
 operation, it did not exhibit the subserviency which Cromwell had 
 hoped to find in it. On the introduction of a bill declaring the Pro- 
 tectorate hereditary in the family of Cromwell, a very large majority 
 Toted against it. The spirit which characterized the remainder of 
 the session showed Cromwell that he had not gained the confidence 
 of the nation ; and an angry dissolution, early in the following year, 
 (Feb. 1655,) increased the general discontent. Soon after, a conspiracy 
 of the royalists broke out, but was easily suppressed ; and even in 
 the army, among the republicans themselves, several officers allowed, 
 their fidelity to be corrupted, and took a share in counsels that were 
 intended to restore the commonwealth to its original vigor and puri- 
 ty. During the same year (1655), a war with Spain broke out; tho 
 
 u* 24
 
 370 MODERN HISTORY. [PABT IL 
 
 island of Jamaica, in the West Indies, was conquered ; the treasure- 
 ships of the Spaniards were captured on their passage to Europe ; 
 and some naval victories were obtained. 
 
 21. In his civil and domestic administration, which was conducted 
 with ability, but without any regular plan, Cromwell displayed a 
 general regard for justice and clemency ; and irregularities were 
 never sanctioned, unless the necessity of thus sustaining his usurped 
 authority seemed to require it. Such indeed were the order and 
 tranquillity which he preserved such his skilful management of per- 
 sons and parties, and such, moreover, the change in the feelings of 
 many of the Independents themselves, since the death of the late 
 monarch, that in the parliament of 1656 a motion was made, and 
 carried by a considerable majority, for investing the Protector with 
 the dignity of king. Although exceedingly desirous to accept the 
 proffered honor, he saw that the army, composed mostly of stern and 
 inflexible republicans, could never be reconciled to a measure that 
 implied an open contradiction of all their past professions, and an 
 abandonment of their principles ; and he was at last obliged to re- 
 fuse that crown which had been solemnly proffered to him by the 
 representatives of the nation. 
 
 22. After this event, the domestic affairs of the country kept 
 Cromwell in perpetual uneasiness. The royalists renewed their con- 
 spiracies against him ; and a majority in parliament now opposed all 
 his favorite measures ; a mutiny of the army was apprehended ; and 
 even the daughters of the Protector became estranged from him. Over- 
 whelmed with difficulties, possessing the confidence of no party, hav- 
 ing lost all composure of mind, and in constant dread of assassina- 
 tion, his health gradually declined, and he expired on the 13th of 
 September, 1658, the anniversary of his great victories, and a day 
 which he had always considered the most fortunate for him. 
 
 23. On the death of Cromwell, his eldest son, Richard, succeeded 
 him in the protectorate, in accordance, as was supposed, with the 
 3ying wish of his father, and with the approbation of the council. 
 But llichard, being of a quiet, unambitious temper, and alarmed at 
 the dangers by which he was surrounded, soon signed his own abdica- 
 tion, and retired to private life. A state of anarchy followed, and 
 
 xiii RB3TO- contending factions, in the army and the parliament, for 
 
 RATION OF a time filled the country with bloody dissensions, when 
 
 [ONAROHY. Q. enera | Monk, who commanded the army in Scotland, 
 
 iinarched into England and declared in favor of the restoration of
 
 CUVP. IV.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 371 
 
 royalty. Th is declaration, freeing the nation from the state of suspense 
 in which it had long been held, was received with almost universal 
 joy : the House of Lords hastened to reinstate itself in its ancient 
 authority; and on the 18th of May, 1660, Charles the Second, son 
 of the late king, was proclaimed sovereign of England, by the united 
 acclamations of the army, the people, and the two houses of par- 
 liament. 
 
 24. The accession of Charles II. to the throne of his ancestors 
 was at first hailed as the harbinger of real liberty, and the promise 
 of a firm and tranquil government, although no terms were required 
 of him for the security of the people against his abuse of their con- 
 fidence. As he possessed a handsome person, and was open and 
 affable in his manners, and engaging in conversation, the first im- 
 pressions produced by him were favorable ; but he was soon found 
 to be excessively indolent, profligate, and worthless, and to entertain 
 notions as arbitrary as those which had distinguished the reign of his 
 father. The parliament, called in 1661, composed mostly of men 
 who had fought for royalty and the church, gave back to the crown 
 its ancient prerogatives, of which the Long Parliament had despoiled 
 it endeavored to enforce the doctrine of passive obedience, by com- 
 pelling all officers of trust to swear that they held resistance to the 
 king's authority to be in all cases unlawful, and passed an act of 
 religious uniformity, by which two thousand Presbyterian ministers 
 were deprived of their livings, and the gaols filled with a crowd of 
 dissenters. Episcopacy was established by law ; and the church, 
 grateful for the protection which she received from the government, 
 made the doctrine of non-resistance her favorite theme, which she 
 taught without any qualification, and followed out to all its extreme 
 consequences. 
 
 25. While these changes were in progress, the manners and morals 
 of the nation were sinking into an excess of profligacy, encouraged 
 by the dissolute conduct of the king in private life. Under the 
 austere rule of the puritans, vice and immorality were sternly re- 
 pressed ; but when the check was withdrawn, they broke forth with 
 ungovernable violence. The cavaliers, as the partisans of the late 
 king were called, in general affected a profligacy of manners, as their 
 distinction from the fanatical and canting party, as they denominated 
 the puritans ; the prevailing immorality pervaded all ranks and pro- 
 fessions ; the philosophy and poetry of the times pandered to the 
 general licentiousness ; and the public revenues were wasted on the
 
 372 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET il 
 
 vilest associates of the king's debauchery. The court of Charles 
 was a school of vice, in which the restraints of decency were laughed 
 to scorn ; and at no other period of English history were the immo- 
 ralities of licentiousness practiced with more ostenation, or with less 
 lisgrace. 
 
 20. While Charles was losing the favor of all parties and classes 
 by his neglect of public business, and his wasteful profligacy, the 
 general discontent was heightened by his marriage with Catherine, a 
 Portuguese princess, and by the sale of Dunkirk 1 to France ; but still 
 greater clamors arose, when, in 1664, the king provoked a war with Hol- 
 land, by sending out a squadron which seized the Dutch settlements 
 on the coast of Africa, and the Cape Verde Islands. The House of 
 Commons readily voted supplies to carry on the war with vigor ; but 
 such was the extravagance, dishonesty, and incapacity of those to 
 whom Charles had intrusted its management, that, after a few inde- 
 cisive naval battles, it was found necessary to abandon all thoughts 
 of offensive war ; and even then the sailors mutinied in the ports from 
 actual hunger, and a Dutch fleet, sailing up the Thames, burned the 
 ships at Chatham, 1 on the very day when the king was feasting with 
 the ladies of his seraglio. The capital was threatened with the 
 miseries of a blockade, and for the first time the roar of foreign guns 
 was heard by the citizens of London. 
 
 27. In the summer of 1665, while the ignominious war with Hol- 
 land was raging, the plague visited England, but was confined prin- 
 cipally to London, where its frightful ravages surpassed in horror 
 anything that had ever been known in the island. But few recovered 
 from the disease, and death followed within two or three days, and 
 sometimes within a few hours, from the first symptoms. During one 
 week jn September more than ten thousand died ; and the whole 
 number of victims was more than a hundred thousand. In the fol- 
 lowing year a fire, such as had not been known in Europe since the 
 
 1. Dunkirk, the most northern seaport of France, is situated on the straits of Dover, in '.he 
 iv>riner province of French Flanders, opposite, and forty-seven miles east from, the English 
 town of Dover. Dunkirk is said to have been founded by Baldwin, count of Flanders, in 
 900 : in 1388 it was burned by the English ; and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it 
 alternately belonged to them and to the Spaniards and French. Charles II. sold it to Louis 
 ^IV. for two hundred thousand pounds sterling. Louis, aware of its importance, lortified it at 
 Uteat expense, but was compelled, by the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, tc consent to the demoli- 
 tion of its fortifications, and even to the shutting up of its port. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. Chatham is a celebrated naval and military depot, on the rivet Medway, twenty-eight 
 miles south-east from London. It was anciently called Cetcham, or the village of cottages. 
 Many Roman remains have been found in its vicinity. It is this town which gives the title of 
 earl to the Pitt family. (Map No. XVI.
 
 CHAP. IV.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 373 
 
 conflagration of Rome under Nero, laid in ruins two-thirds of the 
 metropolis, consuming more than thirteen thousand dwellings, and 
 leaving destitute two hundred thousand people. 
 
 28. After the war with Holland had continued two years, Charles 
 was forced, by the voice of parliament and the bad success of his 
 arms, to conclude the treaty of Breda, 1 (July 1G67,) by which th 
 Dutch possessions of New Netherlands, 2 in America, were confirmed 
 to England, while the latter surrendered to France Acadia and Nova 
 Scotia. 3 In 1672, however, Charles was induced by the French 
 monarch, Louis XIV., to join him in another war against the Dutch. 
 The combined armies of the two kingdoms soon reduced the republic 
 to the brink of destruction ; but the prince of Orange, 4 being pro- 
 moted to the chief command of the Dutch forces, soon roused the 
 courage of his dismayed countrymen : the dykes were opened, laying 
 the whole country, except the cities, under water ; and the invaders 
 were forced to save themselves from destruction by a precipitate re- 
 treat. At length, in 1674, Charles was compelled, by the discon- 
 tents of his people and parliament, who were opposed to the war, to 
 conclude a separate treaty of peace with Holland. France continued, 
 the war, but Holland was now aided by Spain and Sweden, while in 1 676 
 the marriage of the prince of Orange with the Lady Mary, daughter 
 of the duke of York, the brother of Charles, induced England to 
 espouse the cause of the republic, and led to the treaty of Nimeguen 5 
 
 1. Breda is a strongly-fortified town of Holland province of North Brabant, on the river 
 Merk, thirty miles north-east from Antwerp. Breda is a well-built town, entirely surrounded 
 by a marsh that may be laid under water. It was taken from the Spaniards by prince Maurice 
 in 1590, by means of a stratagem suggested by the master of a boat who sometimes supplied 
 the garrison with fuel. With singular address he contrived to introduce into the town, under 
 a cargo of turf, seventy chosen soldiers, who, having attacked the garrison in the night, opened 
 the gates to their comrades. It was retaken by the Spaniards under the marquis Spinola in 
 1625, but was finally ceded to Holland by the treaty of Westphalia in 1648. (Map No. XV.) 
 
 2. JVew Netherlands, the present New York, had been conquered by the English in 1664, 
 while England and Holland were at peace ; and the treaty of Breda confirmed England in the 
 possession of the country. 
 
 3. The French possessions in America, embracing New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the ad- 
 jacent islands, were at first called J)cadia. A fleet sent out by Cromwell in 1654 soon reduced 
 Acadia, but it was restored by the treaty of Breda in 1667. 
 
 4. The family of Orange derive their title from the little principality of Orange, twelve miles 
 in length and nine in breadth, of which the city of Orange, a town of south-eastern France, was 
 the capital. Orange, known to the Romans by the name of Jlrausio, is situated on the small 
 river Jleyne, fiT3 miles east of the Rhone, and twelve miles north of Avignon. From the 
 eleventh to the sixteenth century Orange had its own princes. In 1531 it passed, by marriage, 
 to the count of Nassau. It continued in this family till the death, in 1702, of William Henry of 
 Nassau-Orange (William III. of England), when the succession became the subject of a long 
 contest ; and it was not till the peace of Utrecht in 1715 that this little territory was finally 
 ceded to France. (Map No. XUI.) 
 
 5. .Yi'wyuen, or .Vyf/n-jen, is a town of Holland, province of Guelderland, on the south sid
 
 374 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 in 1678, by which the Dutch provinces obtained honorable and ad- 
 vantageous terms. 
 
 29. Although Charles professed adherence to the principles of the 
 Reformation, yet his great and secret designs were the establishment 
 of papacy, and arbitrary power, in England. To enable him to ac- 
 complish these objects, he actually received, from the king of France, 
 a secret pension of two hundred thousand pounds per annum, for 
 which he stipulated, in return, to employ the whole strength of Eng- 
 land, by land and sea, in support of the claims of Louis to the vast 
 monarchy of Spain. But the popularity with which Charles had 
 commenced his reign had long been expended ; there was a prevail- 
 ing discontent among the people, an anxiety for public liberty, 
 which was thought to be endangered, and a general hatred of the 
 Roman Catholic Religion, which was increased by the circumstance 
 that the king's brother, and heir presumptive, was known to be a 
 bigoted Roman Catholic. Parliament became intractable, and suc- 
 cessfully opposed many of the favorite measures of the king ; and at 
 length in 1 678 a pretended Popish Plot for the massacre of the Pro- 
 testants threw the whole nation into a blaze. One Titus Gates, an 
 infamous impostor, was the discoverer of this pretended plot ; and 
 in the midst of the ferment which .it occasioned, many innocent 
 Catholics lost their lives. At a later period, however, a regular pro- 
 ject for raising the nation in arms against the government was de- 
 tected; and the leaders, among whom were Lord Russell and Alger- 
 non Sidney, being unjustly accused of participation in the Rye House 
 plot for the assassination of the king, were beheaded, in defiance of 
 law and justice. (1683.) From this time until his death Charles 
 ruled with almost absolute power, without the aid of a parliament. 
 He died suddenly in 1685. His brother, the duke of York, imme- 
 diately succeeded to the throne, with the title of James II. 
 
 30. The reign of James was short and inglorious, distinguished 
 xiv. by nothing but a series of absurd efforts to render him- 
 
 JAMES it. se if independent of parliament, and to establish the 
 Roman Catholic religion in England, although he at first made the 
 strongest professions of a resolution to maintain the established gov- 
 ernment, both in church and state. It soon became evident that a 
 crisis was approaching, and that the great conflict between the pre- 
 
 of the Waal, fifty-three miles south -east from Amsterdam. It is known in history from the 
 treaty conc'.uded there August 10th, 1678, and from its capture by the French on the 8th of 
 Sept. 1794, after a sevjre action iu which the allies were defeated. (Map No. XV.)
 
 CHAP. IV-1 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 375 
 
 rogatives of the crown and the privileges of parliament was about 
 to be brought to a final issue. 
 
 31. In the first exercise of his authority James showed the insin- 
 cerity of his professions by levying taxes without the authority of 
 parliament : in violation of the laws, and in contempt of the national 
 feeling, he went openly to mass : he established a court of ecclesias- 
 tical commission with unlimited power over the Episcopal church : 
 he suspended the penal laws, by which a conformity had been re- 
 quired to the established church ; and although any communication 
 with the pope had been declared treason, he sent an embassy to 
 Rome, and in return received a nuncio from his Holiness, and with 
 much ceremony gave him a public and solemn reception at Windsor. : 
 In this open manner the king attacked the principles and prejudices 
 of his Protestant subjects, foolishly confident of his ability to rees- 
 tablish the Roman Catholic religion, although the Roman Catholics 
 in England did not comprise, at this time, the one-hundredth part 
 of the nation. 
 
 32. An important event of this reign was the rebellion of the duke 
 of Monmouth, a natural son of Charles II., who hoped, through the 
 growing discontents of the people at the tyranny of James, to gain 
 possession of the throne ; but after some partial successes he was de- 
 feated, made prisoner, and beheaded. After the rebellion had been 
 suppressed, many of the unfortunate prisoners were hung by the 
 king's officers, without any form of trial ; and when, after some in- 
 terval, the inhuman Jeffries was sent to preside in the courts before 
 which the prisoners were arraigned, the rigors of law were made to 
 equal, if not to exceed, the ravages of military tyranny. The juries 
 were so awed by the menaces of the judge that they gave their ver- 
 dict as he dictated, with precipitation : neither age, sex, nor station, 
 was spared ; the innocent were often involved with the guilty ; and 
 the king himself applauded the conduct of Jeffries, whom he after 
 wards rewarded for his services with a peerage, and invested with the 
 dignity of chancellor. 
 
 1. Windsor is a small town on the south side of the Thames, twenty miles south-west ftom 
 London. It is celebrated for Windsor castle, the principal country seat of the sovereigns of, 
 England, and one of the most magnificent royal residences in Europe. The castle, placed on 
 the summit of a lofty eminence rising abruptly from the river, appears to have been founded 
 by William the Conqueror, and it has been enlarged or embellished by most of his successors. 
 Ou the north and east sides of the castle is the Little Park, a fine expanse of lawn, comprising 
 nearly five hundred acres : on the south side is the Great Park, comprising three thousand 
 eight hundred acres ; while near by is Windsor forejt, a tract fifty-six miles in circumference, 
 laid out by William the Conqueror for the purpose of hunting. (Map No. XVI.)
 
 376 MODERN HISTORY. L p ^a T II 
 
 33. As the king evinced, in all his measures, a settled purpose of 
 invading every branch of the constitution, many of the nobility and 
 great men of the kingdom, foreseeing no peaceable redress of their 
 grievances, finally sent an invitation to William, prince of Orange, 
 the stadtholder of the United Dutch Provinces, who had married the 
 kind's eldest daughter, and requested him to come over and aid them 
 
 bv his arms, in the recovery of their laws and liberties. 
 
 XV REVOLU~ 
 
 TION OF About the middle of November, 16S8, William landed 
 1688. m England at the head of an army of fourteen thousand 
 men, and was everywhere received with the highest favor. James 
 was abandoned by the army and the people, and even by his own 
 children ; and in a moment of despair he formed the resolution of 
 leaving the kingdom, and soon after found means to escape privately 
 to France. These events are usually denominated " the Revolution 
 of 1688." 
 
 34. In a convention-parliament which met soon after the flight of 
 James, it was declared that the king's withdrawal was an abdication 
 of the government, and that the throne was thereby vacant ; and af- 
 tgr a variety of propositions, a bill was passed, settling the crown on 
 William and Mary, the prince and princess of Orange ; the success- 
 ion to the princess Anne, the next eldest daughter of the late king. 
 and to her posterity after that of the princess of Orange. To this 
 settlement of the crown a declaration of rights was annexed, by 
 which the subjects of controversy that had existed for many years, 
 and particularly during the last four reigns, between the king and 
 the people, were finally determined ; and the royal prerogative was 
 more narrowly circumscribed, and more exactly defined, than in any 
 former period of English history. 
 
 35. While the accession of William and Mary was peaceably ac- 
 quiesced in by the English people, some of the Highland clans of 
 Scotland, and the Catholics of Ireland, testified their adherence to 
 the late king by taking up arms in his favor. The former gained the 
 battle of Killiecrankie 1 in the summer of 1689; but the death of 
 their leader, the viscount Dundee, who fell in the moment of victory, 
 ended all the hopes of James in Scotland. In the meantime Louis 
 XIV. of France openly espoused the cause of the fallen monarch, aud 
 
 1. Killiecrankie is a celebrated pass, half a mile in length, through the Grampian hills in 
 Scotland, in the county of Perth, sixty miles northwest from Edinburgh. In the battle of 1G89, 
 fought at the northern extremity of this pass, Mackay commanded the revolutionary forces, 
 and the famous Graham of Claverhous^ Viscount Dundee, the troops of James II. 
 No. XVI.)
 
 CHAP. IV.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 377 
 
 furnished him with a fleet, with which, in the spring of 1689, James 
 landed in Ireland, where a bloody war raged until the autumn of 
 1691, when the whole country was again subjected to the power of 
 England. The course taken by the French monarch led to a decla- 
 ration of war against France in May 1689. The war thus com- 
 menced involved, in its progress, most of the continental powers, 
 nearly all of which were united in a confederacy with William for 
 the purpose of putting a stop to the encroachments of Louis. An 
 account of this war will be more properly given in connection with 
 the history of France, which country, under the influence of the 
 genius and ambition of Louis XIV., acquires, in the latter part of 
 the seventeenth century, a commanding importance in the history of 
 Europe. King William died in the spring of 1 702, having retained, 
 until his death, the chief direction of the affairs of Holland, under 
 the title of stadtholder ; thus presenting the singular spectacle of a mon 
 archy and a republic at the same time governed by the same individual. 
 
 III. FRENCH HISTORY: WARS OF Louis XIY. 1. During the 
 administration of Cardinal Richelieu, (1624 42,) the 
 
 _ . xrT J._ _ I. ADMTNIS- 
 
 able minister of the feeble Louis Xlll., France was TRATJO \ OF 
 
 ruled with a rod of iron. " He made," says Montes- CARDINAL 
 , , . . i.i j . ,1 RICHELIEU. 
 
 queu, " his sovereign play the second part in the mon- 
 archy, and the first in Europe ; he degraded the king, but he rendered 
 the reign illustrious." He humbled the nobility, the Huguenots, and 
 the house of Austria ; but he also encouraged literature and the arts, 
 and promoted commerce, which had been ruined by two centuries of 
 domestic war. He freed France from a state of anarchy, but he es- 
 tablished in its place a pure despotism. No minister was ever more 
 successful in carrying out his plans than Richelieu ; but his successes 
 were bought at the expense of every virtue ; and as a man he merits 
 execration. He died in December 1642, and Louis survived him but 
 a few months, leaving, as his successor, his son Louis, then a child 
 of only six years of age. 
 
 2. During the minority of Louis XIV., Cardinal Mazarin, an 
 Italian, ruled the kingdom as prime minister, under the n MAZAaiN3 
 regency of the queen mother, Anne of Austria. Under ADMINIS- 
 Mazarin was concluded the treaty of Westphalia, which TRATION - 
 terminated the thirty years' war ; and during the early part of his 
 administration occurred the civil war of the Fronde? in which the 
 
 2. " War of the Fronde" so called because the flrst outbreak in Paris was commence! by
 
 378 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 magistracy of Paris, supported by the citizens, rose against the arbi- 
 trary powers of the government, and promulgated a plan for the ref- 
 ormation of abuses ; but when the young nobility affected to abet 
 and adopt its principles, they perverted the cause of freedom to their 
 own selfish interests ; and the vain struggle for constitutional liberty 
 degenerated into the most ridiculous of rebellions. 
 
 3. Though the treaty of "Westphalia (1648) had terminated the 
 " Thirty years' war" among the parties originally engaged in it, a 
 yet France and Spain still continued the contest in which they had 
 at first only a secondary share. The civil disturbances of the Fronde, 
 occurring at this time, greatly favored the Spaniards, who recovered, 
 principally on the borders of the Low Countries, many places which 
 they had previously lost to the French ; and by means of the great 
 military talents of Conde, a French general who had been exiled 
 during the late troubles, and who now fought on the side of the 
 Spaniards, the latter hoped to bring the war to a triumphant issue. 
 The French, however, found in marshal Turenne a general who was 
 more than a rival for Conde : he defeated the latter in the siege of 
 Arras, 1 and compelled the Spaniards to retreat, but was himself 
 compelled to abandon Valenciennes." At this time Mazarin, by 
 flattering the passions of Cromwell, induced England to take part in 
 the contest : six thousand English joined the French army in Flan- 
 ders j* and Dunkirk, taken from the Spaniards, was given to England, 
 according to treaty, as a reward for her assistance. 
 
 4. But France, though victorious, was anxious for peace, as the 
 finances of the kingdom were in disorder, and the death of Cromwell 
 had rendered the alliance with England of little benefit ; while 
 
 troops of urchins with their slings fronde being the French word for " a sling." In derision 
 the insurgents were first called frondeurs, or " slingers," an insinuation that their force was 
 trifling, and their aim merely mischief. 
 
 1. Arras is a city of northern France, in the former province of Artois, thirty-three miles 
 south-east from Agincourt. Robespierre, of infamous memory, and Damiens, the assassin of 
 Louis XV., were natives of Arras. 
 
 2. Valenciennes is a town of north-eastern France, on the Scheldt, (skelt), near the Belgian 
 frontier. (Map No. XV.) 
 
 3. In 803 Charles the Bold established the county of Flanders, which extended from the 
 Btraits of Dover nearly to the mouths of the Scheldt. At different times Flanders fell under 
 the dominion of "Bur' gundy, Spain, &c. Towards the beginning of the eighteenth century it 
 was divided into French, Austrian, and Dutch Flanders. French Flanders comprised the French 
 province of that name. (See Map No. XIII.) Adjoining this territory, on the east, was Aus- 
 trian Flanders; and adjoining the latter, on the east, was Dutch Flanders. Dutch and Austrian 
 Flanders are now comprised in East and West Flanders, the two north-western provinces of 
 Belgium (see Map No. XV.,) although the Dutch portion embraced only a small part of East 
 Glanders. 
 
 a. See p. 314.
 
 in. 
 
 CHAP. IV.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 379 
 
 Spain, engaged in war with the Netherlands and Portugal, gladly 
 acceded to the offers of reconciliation with her most powerful enemy. 
 On the banks of the Bidassoa 1 the treaty, usually known as the treaty 
 of the Pyrenees, was concluded, (Nov. 1659,) and the infanta 
 Maria Theresa, eldest daughter of Philip of Spain, was given in 
 marriage to the French monarch ; although, to prevent the possible 
 union of two such powerful kingdoms, Louis was compelled to re- 
 nounce all claim to the Spanish crown, either for himself or his suc- 
 cessors. By the treaty of the Pyrenees, Conde was pardoned and 
 again received into favor ; the limits of France were extended on the 
 English Channel to Gravelines ; 2 while on the south-west the Pyrenees 
 became its boundary, by the acquisition of Roussillon. s Thus France 
 assumed almost its present form ; its subsequent acquisitions being 
 Franche-Comte 4 and French Flanders. 
 
 5. About a year after the conclusion of the treaty of the Pyrenees, 
 Mazarin died, (March 1661,) and Louis, summoning his council, and ex 
 pressing his determination to take the government wholly 
 into his own hands, strictly commanded the chancellor, LQUig ^ 
 and secretaries of state, to sign no paper but at his- ex- 
 press bidding. To the stern, economical, and orderly Colbert, he in- 
 trusted the management of the treasury ; and in a brief period the 
 purchase of Dunkirk from England, the establishment of numerous 
 manufactures, the building of the Louvre, 5 the Invalides, 8 and the 
 
 1. The Bidassoa, which rises in the Spanish territory, and falls into the Bay of Biscay, forms, 
 In the latter part of its course, the boundary between France and Spain. A short distance 
 from its mouth it forms the small Isle of the Pheasants, where the peace of the Pyrenees was 
 concluded in 1G59. The Bidassoa was the scene of important operations in the peninsular war 
 of 1813. 
 
 2. Gravelines is a small town twelve miles east from Calais. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 3. Roussillon, a province of France before the French Revolution, was bounded on the south 
 and east by the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean. The counts of Roussillon governed this dis- 
 trict for a long period. The last count bequeathed it to Alphonso of Aragon in 1178. In 1-162 
 it was ceded to Louis XI. of France, but in 1493 it was restored to the kings of Aragon, and in 
 1659 was finally surrendered to France by the treaty of the Pyrenees. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 4. Franche-Comte, called also Upper Bur' gundy, had Bur' gundy Proper, or Lower B.ir'- 
 gundy, on the south and west. Besancon was its capital. In the division of the States of the 
 emperor Maximilian, Franche-Comt6 fell to Spain; but Louis XIV. conquered it in 1674, and 
 it was ceded to France by the peace of Nimeguen, in 1678. (Map No. X11L) 
 
 5. The palace of the Louvre, one of the finest regal structures in Europe, has not been the 
 residence of a French monarch since the minority of Louis XV., and is now converted into a 
 national museum and picture gallery. The pictures are deposited on the first floor of a splendid 
 range of rooms above a quarter of a mile in length, and facing the river. 
 
 6. The Hotel des Invalides (in'-va-leed) is a hospital intended for the support of disabled 
 officers and soldiers who have been in active service upwards of thirty years. It covers 
 pace of nearly seven acres, and is one of the grandest i f tional institutions ol" Europ*.
 
 380 MODERN HISTORY. [PAKT II 
 
 palace of Versailles, 1 and the commencement of the canal of Langue- 
 doc," attested the miracles that mere economy can work in finance. 
 
 6. Arousing himself from the thraldom of love intrigues, Louis 
 now began to awake to projects of ambition. The splendor of his 
 court dazzled the nobility : his personal qualities won him the affection 
 of his people : he breathed a new spirit into the administration ; and 
 foreign potentates, like the proud nobles of his court, seemed to 
 quail before his power. He repudiated the stipulations of the 
 treaty of the Pyrenees, on the ground that the dower which he was 
 to receive with his wife had not been paid; and on the death of his 
 father-in-law, Philip IV. of Spain, by which event the crown devolved 
 upon a sickly infant, by a second marriage, he laid immediate claim 
 to the Spanish Netherlands in right of his wife, alleging, in sup- 
 port of the claim, an ancient custom of the province of Brabant, 3 by 
 which females of a first marriage were to inherit in preference to sous 
 of a second. The French monarch, after securing the neutrality of 
 Austria, poured his legions over the Belgian frontier, and with great 
 rapidity reduced most of the fortresses as far as the Scheldt. The 
 captured towns were immediately fortified by the celebrated engineer 
 Vauban, and garrisoned by the best troops of France. (1667-8.) 
 
 7. These successes encouraged Louis to turn his arms towards 
 another quarter; and Franche-Comte, a part of the old Bur' gundy, 
 but still retained by the Spaniards, was conquered before Spain was 
 aware of the danger. (Feb. 1668.) The Hollanders, alarmed at 
 the approach of the French, became reconciled to Spain ; and a 
 Triple Alliance was formed between Holland, Sweden, and England, 
 three Protestant powers, for the purpose of defending Catholic 
 
 1. Versailles is nine miles south-west from Paris. The palace of Versailles, of prodigious 
 size and magnificence, has not been occupied by the court since 1789. It was much out of re 
 pair, when Louis Philippe transformed it into what may be called a national museum, intended 
 to illustrate the history of France, and to exhibit the progress of the country in arts, arms, and 
 civilization. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. The canal of Langaedoc, commencing at Cette, fourteen miles south-west of Montpelier, 
 and extending to Toulouse ou the Garonne, a distance of one hundred and forty-eight miles, 
 thus connects the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 3. Brabant, first erected into a duchy in the seventh century, included the Dutch province of 
 North Brabant, and the Belgic 'provinces of South Brabant and Antwerp. Having passed, by 
 marriage, into the possession of the house of Bur' gundy, it afterwards descended to Charles V. 
 In the seventeenth century the republic of Holland took possession of the northern part, (now 
 North Brabant,) which was thence called Dutch Brabant, while the remainder was known aa 
 Austrian Brabant. Both repeatedly fell into the hands of the French, but in 1815 were in 
 eluded in the kingdom of the Netherlands. Since the revolution of 1830 North Brabant has 
 been included in Holland, and the other provinces, or Austrian Brabant, in Belgium. 
 
 No. XV.)
 
 CHAP. IV.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 381 
 
 Spain against Catholic France. Louis receded before this menacing 
 league, and by restoring Franche-Comte, -which he knew could at any 
 time easily be regained, while he retained most of his Flemish con- 
 quests, concluded the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1 (1668,) which mere- 
 ly suspended the war until the French king was better prepared to 
 carry it on with success. 
 
 8. Tbe great object of Louis was now revenge against Holland, 
 the originator of the triple alliance. Knowing the profligate habits 
 of Charles II., he purchased with ready money the alliance of 
 England ; he also bought the neutrality of Sweden, and the neigh- 
 boring princes of Germany, while in the meantime he created a navy 
 of a hundred vessels, built five naval arsenals, and increased his army 
 to a hundred thousand men. 
 
 9. For the first time the bayonet, so terrible a weapon in French 
 hands, was affixed to the end of the musket ; and the hundred thou- 
 sand soldiers who composed the French army, armed as the French 
 were, might well strike terror into the rulers of Holland, who could 
 raise, at most, an army of only thirty thousand men. 
 
 10. In the spring of 1672 the French armies, avoiding the Spanish 
 Netherlands, passed through the country betwixt the Meuse and the 
 Rhine, 11 crossed the latter river in June, and rapidly advanced to 
 within a few leagues of Amsterdam,* when the Dutch, by opening the 
 dykes, let in the sea and saved the metropolis. But even Amster 
 dam meditated submission ; one project of the inhabitants being to 
 embark, like the Athenians, on board their fleet, sail for their East 
 India settlements, and abandon their country to the modern Xerxes 
 who had come to destroy their liberties. While Amsterdam was 
 secure for the present behind its rampart of waters, and the French 
 armies were wintering triumphantly in the conquered provinces, the 
 envoys of the Dutch roused Europe against the ambition of Louis. 
 
 1. Jlix-la-Chapelle (a-lah-shahpel') is an old and well-built city of the Prussian States, near 
 the eastern confines of Belgium, eighty miles east of Brussels. It was the favorite residence 
 of Charlemagne, and for some time the capital of his empire. Two celebrated treaties have 
 been concluded in this city; the first, May 2d, 1668, between France and Spain; and the 
 tccond, Oct. 18th, 1748, between the different powers engaged in the wars of the Austrian suc- 
 cession. Here also was held the celebrated congress of the allied powers in 1818. (Map No. 
 
 xvn.) 
 
 8. The Meuse and the Rhine ; see Map No. XV. 
 
 3 . Amsterdam, a famous maritime and commercial city of Holland, is on the south bank of the 
 Y., an inlet or arm of the Zuyder Zee. Being situated in a marsh, its buildings are all founded 
 on piles, driven from forty to fifty feet in a soil consisting of alluvial deposits, peat, clay, and 
 Band. The State-House, a magnificent building of freestone, is erected on a f>undalion of 
 thirteen thousand six hundred and fifty-nine piles. Numerous canals divide the city into 
 about a hundred islands. (Map No. XV.)
 
 382 MODERN HISTORY. [PAHT II 
 
 Prince William of Orange, a general of only twenty-two years of 
 age, being placed at the head of the Republic, soon succeeded in de- 
 taching England from the unnatural alliance which she had formed 
 with her ancient enemy : Spain and Austria, awaking to their interests, 
 prepared to send troops to aid the Dutch; and by 1674 nearly all 
 Europe was leagued against the French monarch. 
 
 1 1. Louis was now obliged to abandon Holland ; but, in the Span- 
 ish Netherlands, his great generals, Conde and Turcnne, turning 
 upon the allied armies, for a while kept all Europe at bay. In the 
 following year, (1675,) Turenne was killed by a cannon ball as he 
 was about to enter Germany ; and although Louis created six new 
 marshals, the whole were not equal to the one he had lost. Soon 
 after, Conde retired, disabled by age and infirmity ; and with the 
 loss of her great generals the valor of France, on the land, for a 
 while slumbered. But at this time there appeared a seaman of 
 talent and heroism, named Duquesne, who, being sent to succor 
 Messina, which had revolted against Spain, defeated the fleet of De 
 Ruyter in a terrible naval battle within sight of Mount ^Btna. The 
 Dutch admiral himself was among the slain. In the second battle, 
 in 1677, Duquesne almost annihilated the Dutch fleet. Under a 
 grateful monarch this man might have become high admiral of 
 France ; but Louis was growing bigoted with his years, and his faith- 
 ful servant was reproached for being a Protestant. " When I fought 
 for your majesty," replied the blunt sailor, " I never thought of 
 what might be your religion." His son, driven into exile for ad- 
 hering to the reformed faith, carried away with him the bones of his 
 father, determined not to leave them in an ungrateful country. 
 
 12. In the meantime conferences took place at Nimeguen: the 
 allies wished peace ; and France and Holland, the original parties in 
 the war, were equally exhausted. At length, in August 1678, the 
 treaty was signed, Louis retaining most of his conquests in the Spanish 
 Netherlands, all French Flanders in fact, as well as Franche-Comte. 
 Spain, from whom these possessions were obtained, assented to the 
 treaty ; for the imbecile monarch of that country knew not what 
 towns belonged to him, nor where was the frontier line of what he 
 still retained of the Spanish Netherlands. "Here may be seen," 
 says Voltaire, " how little do events correspond to projects. Hol- 
 land, against which the war had been undertaken, and which had 
 nearly perished, lost nothing, nay, even gained a barrier ; while the
 
 CHAP. IV-1 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 38 
 
 other powers, that had armed to defend and guarantee her indepe:/ 
 denee, all lost something." 
 
 13. The years which followed the peace of Nimeguen were the 
 most prosperous for France ; and formed the zenith of the reign of 
 Louis XIV. All Europe had been armed against him, and success 
 had more or less crowned all his enterprises. He assumed to him- 
 self the title of Great ; and one of his dukes even kept a burning 
 lamp before the statue of the monarch, as before an altar ; the least 
 insult offered by foreign courts to his representatives, or neglect of 
 etiquette, was sure to bring down signal vengeance. In the years 
 1682 and 1683 Algiers was bombarded, then a new mode of warfare: 
 in 1684 Genoa experienced the same fate because it refused to allow 
 the French monarch to establish a depot within its territory. Even 
 the pope was humbled before the " Grand Monarch ;" some of the 
 German princes were expelled from their territories ; and in time 
 of peace French maurauding parties devastated the Spanish provinces. 
 Louis increased his navy to two hundred and thirty vessels ; and 
 toward the end of his reign his armies amounted to four hundred 
 and fifty thousand men. But the greatest glories of the reign of 
 Louis were those connected with literature and the arts. Men of 
 letters now, for the first time, began to exert a great influence on the 
 mind of the French nation ; and the familiar names of Moliere, Ra- 
 cine, Boileau, La Fontaine, Bossuet, Massillon, and Fenelon, adorned 
 the age of Louis, and shed on the laud the brightness of their fame. 
 In the next century the writings of these men, and of their success- 
 ors, determined the fate of the great monarchy which Louis had built 
 up. 
 
 14. The queen of France being dead, towards the } r ear 1685 Louis 
 secretly married Madame Scarron, the widow of the celebrated 
 comic writer, on whom he conferred the title of Madame De Main- 
 tenon. This woman, who had been educated a Calvinist, and bad 
 abjured her religion, would have made all Protestants do the same ; 
 and it was chiefly through her influence, and that of the royal con- 
 fessor La Chaise, that the king, naturally bigoted, became a bitter 
 persecutor of his Protestant subjects. In 1685 he revoked the edict 
 of Nantes, which had given tolerance to all religions, forbade all ex- 
 ercise of the Protestant worship, and banished from the kingdom, 
 within fifteen days, all Protestant ecclesiastics who would not recant. 
 Afterwards he closed the ports against the fugitives, sent to the gal- 
 loys those who attempted to escnpe. and confiscated their property
 
 384 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II. 
 
 France lost by these cruel measures two hundred thousand some 
 say five hundred thousand of her best subjects ; and the bigotry 
 of Louis gave a greater blow to the industry and wealth of his king- 
 dom than the unlimited expenses of his pride and ambition. 
 
 15. The cruelties of Louis to the Protestants roused the hearts 
 of the Germans, Dutch, and English, against him, and accelerated a 
 general war. In 1686 a league was formed at Augsburg by all the 
 German princes to restrain the encroachments of Louis : Holland 
 joined it, Spain also, excited by jealousy of a domineering neighbor; 
 Sweden, Denmark, and Savoy, were afterwards gained; and the 
 revolution of 1688, by which William of Holland ascended the 
 throne of England, placed the latter country at the head of the 
 confederacy. But Louis was not daunted by the power of the 
 league : anticipating his enemies, he was first in the field, sending an 
 army against Germany in 1688, which ravaged the Palatinate 1 with 
 fire and sword. He also sent an army into Flanders, one into Italy, 
 and a third to check the Spaniards in Catalonia ; while at the same 
 time he sent a fleet and an army to Ireland, to aid James II. in re- 
 covering the throne of England. 
 
 16. After the first campaign, in which Louis profited little, he 
 gave the command of his armies to new generals of approved talent, 
 and instantly the fortune of the war changed. In 1690 Savoy was 
 overrun by the French marshal Catinat, and Flanders by marshal 
 Luxembourg : the combined squadrons of England and Holland 
 were defeated by the French admiral Tourville, off Beachy Head; 8 
 and a descent was made on the coast of England. In 1692 the for- 
 tress of Namur 3 was taken by the French, in spite of all the efforts 
 of William and the allies to relieve it ; but during the progress of the 
 siege the French were defeated in a terrible naval battle off Cape 
 La Hogue ; 4 a battle that decided the fate of the Stuarts, and marka 
 the era of England's dominion over the seas. 
 
 1. The Palatinate, by which is generally understood the Lower Palatinate, or Palatinate of 
 the Rhine, was a country of Germany, on both sides of the Rhine, embracing about sixteen 
 hundred sqxiare miles, and now divided amrmg Prussia, Bavaria, Baden, Hesse Darmstadt 
 Nassau, &c. That part of it west of the Rhine, and belonging to Bavaria, is still called " The 
 Palatinate." fhe Upper Palatinate, embracing a somewhat larger territory, was in Bavaria, 
 and bordered on Bohemia. Amberg was its capital. (Mrp No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Beachy Head is a bold promontory on the southei i coast of England, eighteen miles 
 eouth-west from Hastings. (Map No. XVI.) 
 
 3. JVamttr is a strongly-fortified town of Belgium, at the lunction of the Satnbre and Meuse, 
 lliirly-flve miles south-east from Brussels. {Map No. XV.) 
 
 4. Cape La Hague is a prominent headland of France, on the English Channel, sixties 
 miles north-west of Cherbourg. (Map No. XIII.)
 
 CHAP. IV.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 385 
 
 17. The campaign of 1693 was fortunate for the French, who 
 gained the bloody battle of Nerwinden 1 over king William defeated 
 the duke of Savoy in a general action at Marseilles made progress 
 against the Spaniards in Catalonia and gained some advantages 
 at sea. But after this year Louis no longer visited his armies in 
 person ; and succeeding campaigns became less fruitful of important 
 and decisive results. France had been exhausted by the enormous 
 exertions of her monarch, and all parties were anxious to terminate 
 a. war in which much blood had been shed, much treasure expended, 
 nd no permanent acquisitions made. Conferences for peace com- 
 menced in 1696 ; and in the beginning of 1697 the plenipotentiaries 
 of the several powers assembled at Ryswick," a small town in Hol- 
 land. In the treaty, which was signed in September, England gained 
 only the recognition of the monarch of her choice ; while the French 
 king's renunciation of the Spanish succession, which had been one 
 important object of the war, was not even mentioned. Although 
 in the treaty Louis appeared to make concessions, yet he kept the 
 new frontier that he had chosen in Flanders, whilst the possession of 
 Strasburg 3 extended the French limits to the Rhine. Louis had 
 baffled the most powerful European league ; and although the com- 
 merce of the kingdom was destroyed, and the country exhausted of 
 men and money, while a dreadful famine was ravaging what war had 
 spared, yet at the close of the seventeenth century France still pre- 
 served, over surrounding nations, the ascendency that Richelieu had 
 planned, and that Louis XIV. had proudly won. 
 
 IV. COTEMPORARY HISTORY. 1. Besides France, England, Ger- 
 many, and the countries connected with them in wars and alliances, 
 the strictly universal history of this period embraces a range more 
 extended than that of any previous century. On the continent the 
 histories of the leading powers become more and more intermingled 
 
 1. Nerwinden is a small village of Belgium, about thirty-three miles south-east from Broaseb. 
 
 2. Jiyswick is a small tovoi in the west of Holland, two miles south-east from Hague, ami 
 thirty-five south-vest from Amsterdam. The peace of Ryswick terminated what is known in 
 American history,- as "King William's War," a war between the French and the English 
 American colonies, attended with numerous inroads of the Indians, who were in alliance witl 
 the French. (Map No. XV.) 
 
 3. Strasb xrg is an ancient fortified city on the west bank of the Rhine, in the former prov- 
 ince of Alsace. It is principally noted for its cathedral, said to have been originally founded 
 by Clo 'is, in 504. The modern building, however, was begun in 1015, but not finished till the 
 fifteenth century. Its spire reaches to the extraordinary height of four hundred and sixty-six 
 feet about seven feet higher than St. Peter's in Rome, and about five feet higher than the 
 grot pyramid of Cheops. (Mapt NOB. XIII. and XVII.) 
 
 s 25
 
 386 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II 
 
 the Northern States are seen growing in importance, and beginning 
 to take part in European politics ; while, abroad, colonies are planted 
 that are soon to assume the rank of independent and powerful nations 
 
 2. It was not until after the Reformation that the three Scandi- 
 
 navian States, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, came into 
 
 I. DENMARK, . . . , 
 
 SWEDEN, contact with the southern nations ot Christendom, nor 
 AND until the commencement of the " Thirty Years' War," 
 in the early part of the seventeenth century, that they 
 took any active part in the concerns of their southern neighbors, 
 when, under the conduct of the heroic Gustavus Adolphus, Sweden 
 and her allies warred so manfully in the cause of religious freedom 
 Under Gustavus, the glory and power of Sweden attained their 
 greatest height ; and although the successes of the Swedish arms 
 continued under Christina, Charles X., and Charles XL, Swedish 
 history offers little further that is interesting to the general student 
 until the accession of Charles XII. in 1697, the extraordinary 
 events of whose career belong to the next century. 
 
 3. The history of Poland, during most of the seventeenth cen- 
 
 tury, is of less interest to the general reader than that of 
 Sweden, being filled with accounts of unimportant do- 
 mestic contentions among the nobility, and of foreign wars with 
 Sweden, Russia, and Turkey, while the mass of the people, in the 
 lowest state of degradation, were slaves, in the fullest extent of the 
 term, and not supposed to have any legal existence. The greatest 
 of the monarchs of Poland was John Sobieski, elected to the throne 
 in 1674, the fame of whose victories over the Turks threw a transient 
 splendor on the waning destinies of his ill-fated country. His first 
 great achievement was the victory of Kotzim, 1 gained, with a com- 
 paratively small force, over an army of eighty thousand Mussulmen, 
 strongly intrenched on the banks of the Dniester, leaving forty thou- 
 sand of the enemy dead in the precincts of the camp. (Nov. 1673.) 
 All Europe was electrified with this extraordinary triumph, the great- 
 est that had been won for three centuries over the infidels. 
 
 4. Other victories of the Polish hero, scarcely less important, are 
 recorded in the annals of Poland ; but what has immortalized the 
 name of John Sobieski is the deliverance of Vienna 8 in 1683. A 
 
 1. Kotzim is now an important fortress of south-westorn Russia, situated on thf right bank 
 of the Dniester, in the province ot Bessarabia. The Turks strongly-fortified it ii 1718, but it 
 was successively taken by the Russians in 1730. 1769, and 1788. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Vienna, the capital of the Austrian empire, is on the southern bank of the Danube, three 
 
 and thirty miles south-east from Berlin, and eUjht hun Ired miles north-west from
 
 CHAP. IV.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 387 
 
 revolt of the Hungarians from the dominion of Austria, and an alli- 
 ance formed between them and the Turks, had brought an army of 
 nearly three hundred thousand men against the Austrian capital, 
 which was defended by its citizens, and a garrison of little more 
 than eleven thousand men. After an active siege of more than two 
 mouths, Vienna was reduced to the last extremity. In the mean- 
 time the Austrian emperor, who had left his capital to make what 
 defence it could against the immense hosts of Turks that poured 
 down upon it, had solicited the aid of the Polish king ; and Sobieski 
 was not long in making his appearance at the head of a small, but 
 resolute army of eighteen thousand veterans. The combined Polish 
 and Austrian forces, when all assembled, amounted to only seventy 
 thousand men, whom the Turks outnumbered more than three to 
 one ; but Sobieski, whose name alone was a terror to the infidels, 
 was at once the Agamemnon and Achilles of the Christian host. 
 
 5. Sunday the 12th of September, 1683, was the important day 
 that was to decide whether the Turkish crescent or the cross, was to 
 wave on the turrets of Vienna. At five o'clock in the afternoon 
 Sobieski had drawn up his forces in the plain fronting the Mussul- 
 men camp, and ordering the advance, he exclaimed aloud, " Not to 
 us, Lord, but to thee be the glory." Whole bands of Tartar 
 troops broke and fled when they heard the name of the Polish hero 
 repeated from one end to the other of the Ottoman lines. At the 
 same moment an eclipse of the moon added to the consternation of 
 the superstitious Moslems, who beheld with dread the crescent 
 waning in the heavens. With a furious charge the Polish infantry 
 seized an eminence that commanded the grand Vizier's position, 
 when Kara Mustapha, taken by surprise at this unexpected attack, 
 fell at once from the heights of confidence to the depths of despair. 
 Charge upon charge was rapidly hurled upon the already wavering 
 Moslems, whose rout soon became general. In vain the vizier tried 
 to rally the broken hosts. " Can you not aid me !" said he to the 
 
 Constantinople. Population about three hundred and seventy thousand. In Roman history 
 Vienna is known as Vindabona, (see Map No. VIII.,) and is remarkable as being the place 
 where Marcus Aurelius died. After the time of Charlemagne, margraves or dukes held Vienna 
 till the middle of the thirteenth century, soon after which it came into the possession of the 
 house of Hapsburg. In 1484 it was taken by the Hungarians, whose king, Matthias, made it 
 the seat of his court Since the time of Maximilian it has been the usual residence of the 
 arch-dukes of Austria, and the emperors of Germany. About two miles from the city is 
 Schiin.'jrunn, the favorite summer residence of the emperor. It was twice occupied by Napo- 
 leon : the treaty of Schonbrunn was signed in it in 1808, and here the duke of Reichstadt, BOO 
 of Napoleon, died i i 1832. ( Map No. T<VII.)
 
 338 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II 
 
 cham of the Tartars, who pa?sed him among the fugitives. " I know 
 the king of Poland," was the reply ; " and I tell you, that with such 
 an enemy we have no safety but in flight. Look at the sky ; see if 
 God is not against us." 
 
 6. So sudden and general was the panic among the Turks, that at 
 six o'clock Sobieski entered the camp where a hundred and twenty 
 thousand tents were still found standing ; the innumerable multitude 
 of the Orientals had disappeared ; but their spoils, their horses, 
 their camels, their splendor, loaded the ground. The cause of Chris- 
 tianity of civilization had prevailed ; the wave of Mussulman 
 power had retired, never to return. But Sobieski received little 
 thanks from a jealous monarch for rescuing him and his country 
 from irretrievable ruin ; and Poland unhappy Poland ! had saved 
 a serpent from death, which afterward turned and stung her for the 
 kindness. Sobieski died in 1696, in the midst of the ruin that was 
 fast overwhelming his country through the dissensions and clamors 
 of a turbulent nobility, and just in time to save his withered laurels 
 from being torn from his brow by the rude hand of rebellion. With 
 him the greatness of his native land may be said to have ended. 
 
 7. Russia, at the commencement of the seventeenth century, was 
 
 immersed in extreme ignorance and barbarism ; and al- 
 
 III. RUSSIA. , . 
 
 though a glimmering ot light dawned upon her during 
 the reign of Alexis, who died in 1677, yet the great epoch in the 
 history of Russia is the reign of Peter the Great, whose genius first 
 opened to its people the advantages of civilization. In 1689, this 
 prince, then only seventeen years of age, became Bole monarch of 
 Russia. The vigorous development of his mind was a subject of 
 universal wonder and admiration. Full of energy and activity, he 
 found nothing too arduous to be attempted, and he commenced at 
 once the vast project of changing the whole system of the govern 
 ment, and of reforming the manners of the people. His first exer 
 tions were directed to the remodelling and disciplining of the army 
 and the improvement of his resources ; and from the model of a smal\ 
 yacht on the river which runs through Moscow, he constructed tht 
 first Russian navy. In 1694 he took from the Turks the advan 
 tugeous port of Azof, 1 which opened to his subjects the commerce oi 
 
 1. The sea of Azof , the Pa/us JMccotis of the ancients, communicates by the narrow strait o 
 Yenicale, (an. Cimmerian Bosporus,) with the north-western angle of the Black Sea. Thit 
 port of Azof 13 at the m>uth of the Don, at the north-eastern extremity of the sea of Azof 
 The town, anciently called Tanais, a> d, in the middle ages, Tuna, once had an extensive trad* 
 but is now fast falling into decay.
 
 CHAP. IV.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 389 
 
 the Black Sea. This acquisition enlarged his views, and he com- 
 menced a system of internal improvements, which had for its ob- 
 ject, by connecting the waters of the Dwina, : the Volga, 2 and the 
 Don, to open a water communication between the Baltic, Black, and 
 Caspian Seas. A few years later he laid, near the shores of the 
 Gulf of Finland, the foundations of St. Petersburg,' a city which he 
 designed to be the emporium of Northern commerce and the capital 
 of his dominions. 
 
 8. Being convinced of the superiority of the natives of Western 
 Europe over his own barbarous subjects, in 1697 he sent out to Italy, 
 Holland, and Germany, two or three hundred young men, to learu 
 the arts of those countries, particularly ship-building and navigation ; 
 and in the following year he himself left his dominions, as a private 
 individual, to procure knowledge by his own observation and experi- 
 ence. He visited Amsterdam, where he entered himself as a com 
 mon carpenter in one of the principal dockyards, laboring and liv 
 ing like the other workmen, and demanding the same pay; he also 
 went to England, where he examined the principal naval arsenals ; and 
 after a year's absence returned home, greatly improved in mechanical 
 Bcience, and accompanied by numerous artisans whom he had engaged 
 to aid him in the great design of instructing his subjects in the arts 
 of more civilized nations. The chief political acts of the reign of 
 this truly great man belong to the history of the next century. 
 
 9. In the sixteenth century Turkey ; during the reign of Solyman 
 the Magnificent, the cotemporary of the emperor Charles 
 
 fT 1 J i xl. C 1 j.1. 1 J IV - TUEKKY. 
 
 V., had become the most powerful empire m the world, 
 reaching from the confines of Austria on the west, to the banks 
 of the Euphrates on the east, and extending over Egypt on the 
 south. Other able princes, who succeeded Solyman, with Mussul- 
 man pride held all the rest of the world in scorn, and the Ottoman 
 arms continued to maintain their ascendency over those of Christen- 
 dom until the latter part of the seventeenth century, when, in 1683, 
 the famous Sobieski, king of Poland, totally defeated the army em- 
 
 1. The Dwina here met Honed rises near the sources of the Volga, and empties into th Gull 
 of Riga, in the Baltic, nine miles below Riga. Another river of the same name falls into the 
 White Sea, thirty-five miles below Archangel. 
 
 2. The Volga, or Wolga, the largest river of Europe, has its sources in central Russia, and 
 Its month in the Caspian Sea. It is the great artery of Russia, and the grand route of the in- 
 vernal traffic of that empire ; but it is said that its waters are decreasing in depth, and that 
 iandbanks are becoming serious obstacles to its navigation. 
 
 3. St. Petersburg, the modern capital of Russia, and one of the largest and finest ciMeaot 
 Europe, is situated at the mouth of the river Neva, at its entrance into the Grlf cf Finland.
 
 390 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 ployed in the uiege of Vienna. This event marks the era of the 
 decline of the Ottoman power. A powerful league formed between 
 Austria, Russia, Poland, and Venice, followed upon the defeat of 
 the Ottoman forces at Vienna, and in 1687 the Turks were finally 
 driven out of Hungary, and dispossessed of the greater portion of 
 Southern Greece. In 1697, while this war continued, they sustained 
 a total defeat by the famous Prince Eugene, in the battle of Zenta,' 
 in which they lost thirty thousand men. The treaty of Carlowitz' 
 in 1699, completed the humiliation of the Porte ; a Transylvania, 3 
 Sclavonia, 4 and Hungary, being preserved to the emperor of Austria ; 
 Podolia, 6 with other portions of the Ukraine,' remaining in the pos- 
 session of Poland, while Russia retained her conquests on the Blank 
 Sea. Morea, or Southern Greece, was ceded to Venice. 
 
 10. The political history of Italy, during the seventeenth century, 
 is of trifling importance, but the social condition of its 
 
 V ITALY 
 
 people merits a passing notice. The Reformation had 
 destroyed the political influence of the pope, who was reduced to the 
 rank of a petty sovereign over the small territory embraced in the 
 " States of the Church ;" while Spain, mistress of the fairest prov- 
 inces of the peninsula, as well as of its two large and beautiful 
 islands, inflicted upon the country numerous evils which made the 
 people at once poor and miserable. The effects of Spanish rule are 
 faithfully characterized by a Milanese writer, who forcibly depicts 
 the wretchedness of the fertile and once populous valley of Lom- 
 bardy. " The Spaniards," he remarks, " possessed central Lombardy 
 for a hundred and seventy-two years. They found in its. chief city 
 
 1. Zenta is a small town of Southern Hungary, on the Theiss, a northern branch of the Dan- 
 ube, two hundred and forty miles south-east from Vienna. (In history the name of this town 
 is variously spelled Zenta, Zenthn, Zeuta, and Zeutha.) (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Carlowiti is a town of Austrian Sclavouia, on the southern bank of the Danube, about 
 fifty miles south of Zenta. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. Transylvania is the most eastern province of the Austrian empire, lying east of Hungary, 
 and north of the Turkish province of Wallachia. It is divided principally among three dis- 
 tinct races, the Magyar, the Szekler or Siculi, and the Saxon. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 4. Sclavonia, a province of the Austrian empire, usually regarded as forming a part of Hum 
 gary, has Hungary on the north, and the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Servia on the south. 
 (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 5. Podolia, now a province of south-western Russia, lies along the eastern bank of the 
 Dniester. It was long governed by its own princes ; but, in 1569, it was united to Poland. It 
 has belonged to Russia since 1793. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 6. The Urkaine, (a word signifying " the frontier,'") was an extensive country in the south 
 eastern part of Russian Poland, now forming the Russian provinces of Podolia, Kiev, Charltow, 
 and Poltava. Kiev, on the Dnieper, was the chief town. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 a. Porte -the Ottoman court, so called from the gate of the sultan's pahice where justice li 
 administered ; as the Sublime Forte. L. porta, Fr. forte, " a door or gate."
 
 CHAP IV.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 391 
 
 three bundled thousand souls : they left in it scarcely a third of that 
 number. They found in it seventy woollen manufactories : they left 
 in it no more than five. They found agriculture skilful and nour- 
 ishing : before the province was wrested from them they had passed 
 laws which made emigration a capital crime." The Spanish gov- 
 ernors of the provinces looked upon the conquered countries as es- 
 tates calculated to fill their own and the royal coffers ; and not only 
 was the nation drained of its treasure, but of its blood also. The 
 flower of the people, draughted by thousands into the Spanish 
 armies, perished in the wars of France, Germany, and the Netherlands. 
 
 11. But numerous as were the evils which flowed from the admin- 
 istrative oppression of the Spaniards, they were light when compared 
 with *-He fearful corruption in morals that pervaded the whole system 
 of society. An insidious licentiousness, under the garb of gallantry, 
 had been introduced by the Spaniards, while the spirit of the people, 
 kindled into frenzy by Castilian fancies about knightly honor, but no 
 longer ennobled by personal courage, or manly self-respect, made 
 Italy, for many generations, infamous as the scene of poisonings and 
 assassinations. Risings and revolutions of the people were frequent ; 
 during nearly the whole period of the seventeenth century the coasts 
 were continually infested by Turkish and Algerine corsairs ; the 
 fields were ravaged ; houses, villages, and whole towns were burned ; 
 and thousands were carried away into slavery ; while, in the interior, 
 robbers were scarcely less destructive, large troops of whom plun- 
 dered, or exacted ransoms, and more than once resisted successfully 
 battalions of regular soldiers. Such is the mournful picture pre- 
 sented by Italy, the land of Roman greatness and renown, during 
 the seventeenth century. 
 
 12. The principal events, to which we have not already al- 
 luded, that mark the history of the Spanish penin- yj 
 sula during the seventeenth century, are the expulsion SPANISH 
 of the Moors, the revolt of Portugal, and the ac- PKNINSDLA - 
 knowledgment of the independence of Holland. Twice during 
 the sixteenth century, the Moors, or Moriscos, had risen against 
 their Christian masters ; they had been dispersed, from Granada, 
 among the other Spanish provinces, and compelled, against their 
 will, to receive Christian baptism. Tranquillity could scarcely 
 be hoped from so arbitrary a measure ; and the Moriscos, thirsting 
 for revenge, entered into a correspondence with the African princes, 
 whom they urged to invade the peninsula, promising to rise on the
 
 392 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET IL 
 
 first signal. This circumstance becoming known, the expulsion of the 
 whole borly was decreed, and the cruel mandate was carried into 
 execution, although not without open resistance in several of the 
 provinces. (1610.) In all, no fewer than six hundred thousand of 
 the most ingenious and industrious portion of the community were 
 forcibly driven from their homes, while large numbers^ by making a 
 profession of Christianity, were permitted to remain. This was a 
 blow no less fatal to the prosperity of Spain, than the revocation of 
 the edict of Nantes was to a sister kingdom. 
 
 13. Portugal had been united to Spain in 1580, partly by con- 
 quest, and partly in accordance with the wishes of a portion of its 
 nobility ; but the union failed to give satisfaction to the people of the 
 former country. Finding themselves ground to the dust by intoler- 
 able taxes and forced loans, their complaints disregarded, their per- 
 sons insulted, and their prosperity at an end, in 1640 they organized a 
 general revolt, and the sway of Spain over Portugal was forever broken, 
 by the election, to the throne, of the duke of Braganza, 1 with the title 
 of John IV. To complete the humiliation of Spain, eight years later, 
 in the treaty of Munster, 2 she was compelled to acknowledge the in- 
 dependence of Holland, after having maintained against her a warfare 
 of eighty years' duration, only interrupted by a brief truce of twelve 
 years from 1609 to 1621 ; and even during this period, hostilities 
 did not cease in the Indies. The disasters that were befalling Ro- 
 man Catholic Spain were fast overwhelming that proud monarchy 
 with disgrace and ruin, while the new Republic of Holland was 
 taking its place, as a free and independent State, among the most 
 powerful nations of Europe. The treaty of Westphalia, signed the 
 same year, 1648, secured to Holland internal tranquillity, by recon- 
 ciling the conflicting interests of her own people, and guaranteeing 
 the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, one of the noble airna 
 and results of Christian civilization. 
 
 1 4. The history of the Asiatic nations in the seventeenth century, 
 
 merits but little notice. During this period a series of 
 ASIATIC imbecile tyrants ruled over Persia. Their reigns were 
 NATIONS. g enera liy peaceful, but the higher classes were enervated 
 
 1. Bra.ga.ma. is a town at the north-eastern extremity of Portugal. In 1442 it was erected 
 Into a duchy, and in 1040, John, eighth duke of Braganza, ascended the Portuguese throna. 
 under the title of John IV. His descendants continue to enjoy the crown of Portugal, and 
 have also acquired that of Brazil. The town and surrounding district of Braganza still belong 
 to the king of Portugal as the duke of Braganza. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. JUunster, a town of Westphalia, is ninety-five miles north-east from Aix-la-chapelle. Tha 
 ttea'.y of Munster was a part of that of Weslphalia. See We tphalia, p. 300. (Map No. XVII,)
 
 CHAP. IV.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 393 
 
 by luxury, and the martial spirit of the people suffered so much 
 from inaction, that early in the following century the Affghans, a 
 warlike people on the confines of India, invaded the kingdom, and 
 placed the ro} r al diadem on the head of their chief Mahmoud. In 
 1644 an important revolution was terminated in China, by which the 
 Manchoos, a race sprung from the expelled Mongols and the eastern 
 Tartars, established themselves firmly in the empire, after a war of 
 twenty-seven years' duration. Happily for the country, Shunchy, 
 the first emperor of the Manchoo-Tartar dynasty, showed himself a 
 generous and enlightened monarch ; and his son and successor 
 Kang-hy, who had the singular fortune to reign sixty years, was one 
 of the most illustrious sovereigns that ever ruled the country, the 
 Chinese historians ascribing to him almost every virtue that can 
 adorn a throne. 
 
 15. In the early part of the seventeenth century the great Mogul 
 empire of Asia, having northern Hindostan for the seat of its central 
 power, and the Persian dominions for its western limits, gradually 
 declined in greatness until, in 1659, the famous Aurungzebe succeed- 
 ed to the throne, by the imprisonment of his father. Under this 
 prince, who ruled with the most tyrannical cruelty, establishing Mo- 
 hammedanism throughout his dominions by a rigorous persecution 
 of the Hindoos, and the destruction of their temples, the Mogul em- 
 pire was extended and consolidated; but on his death, in 1707, it 
 experienced a rapid decline, and was soon broken into fragments. 
 
 16. The seventeenth century marks the era of the establishment 
 of the principal Dutch, Spanish, French, and English ym CQLo 
 colonies in the New World, and on the coasts of Asia NIAL ESTAB- 
 and Africa. Near the close* of the preceding century the L1SHMEN " re - 
 Dutch had founded the colony of Surinam 1 in South America, and 
 in 1607 they gained a footing in the East Indies by capturing, from 
 the Portuguese, the Moluccas" or Spice Islands, which they continued 
 to hold against all competitors. A few years later they founded 
 New Amsterdam, now New York. In 1619 they founded Batavia, 
 
 1, Surinam, or Dutch Guiana, is on the north-eastern coast of South America, having French 
 Guiana on the east, and English Guiana on the west. 
 
 2. The Moluccas, of which Amboyna is the principal, are a cluster of small islands north 
 of Australia or New Holland, and between Celebes and New Guinea. They are distinguished 
 chiefly for the production of spices, particularly nutmegs and cloves. When in 1511 the Por- 
 tuguese discovered these islands, the Arabians were already settled there. The Portuguese had 
 almost the entire monopoly of the spice trade till the beginning of the seventeenth century, 
 when the Dutch took be islands from them. Since 1796 the Moluccas have been twice con- 
 quered by the English, but by the peace of Paris in 1815 they were restored to the Dutch.
 
 394 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II. 
 
 in the island of Java ; about the same time they wrested the Jap- 
 anese trade from the Portuguese. In 1650 they seized and colonized 
 the Cape of Good Hope, which had previously been claimed by the 
 English, and six years later they expelled the Portuguese from the 
 island of Ceylon. 1 The Dutch adopted, in their colonial regulations, 
 a more exclusive system of policy than other nations ; and this, to- 
 gether with their harsh treatment of the natives, was the principal 
 cause of the final ruin of their empire in the Indies. 
 
 1 7. The numerous colonies founded by Spain in the New World 
 during the previous century had now become consolidated into one 
 vast empire, embracing most of the islands of the West Indies, to- 
 gether with the extensive realms of Mexico and Peru, over which 
 the Spanish monarch ruled with the most absolute despotism. The 
 immense wealth derived from these possessions excited the envy and 
 cupidity of all Europe ; and frequently, during the wars of the sev- 
 enteenth century, the Spanish fleets, laden with the gold and silver 
 of the New World, fell into the hands of the Dutch, French, or 
 English cruisers ; while bands of pirates, or Buccaneers, who had 
 their coverts among the small islands of the West Indies, often 
 plundered the coasts, and roamed at will, the terror of the Spanish 
 seas. 
 
 18. The materials for a history of the Spanish possessions in the 
 New World, during nearly three centuries, are exceedingly meagre 
 and uninteresting, treating of little but the same unvarying rule of 
 arbitrary and avaricious viceroys or governors, of commercial re- 
 strictions the most odious and oppressive, and of the miseries of an 
 aboriginal population, the most abject that could possibly be conceived. 
 
 19. The French colonization, in the New World, during the sev- 
 enteenth century, embraces only the founding of Quebec, and a few 
 other feeble settlements in the Canadas ; and, at the very close of 
 the century, the landing of two hundred emigrants, and the erection 
 of a rude fort, in Lower Louisiana. Nor was anything importan 
 accomplished by the French, during this period, in the newly discov- 
 ered regions of the Old World. About the middle of the century 
 they attempted to make Madagascar 2 one of their colonies, a scheme 
 
 1. Ceylon is a large island belonging to Great Britain, near the. southern extremity of Hin- 
 dostan. The cinnamon tree, which was found only in Ceylon and Cochin-China, is its most 
 valuable production. Extensive ruins of cities, canals, aqueducts, bridges, temples, &c., show 
 thsl Ceylon was, at a remote period, a rich, populous, and comparatively civilized country. 
 After Holland had been erected into the Bataviau republic in 1795, the English took possession 
 of Ceylon, and at the peace of Amiens, iu 1802, it was formally ceded to them. 
 
 * Madagatcar is a large is.and off the eastern coast of South Africa, from which it is sepa-
 
 CIIAP. IV.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 395 
 
 which proved futile on account of the extreme unhealthiness of the 
 island. In 1672 the French purchased the town of Pondicherry, 1 
 in Hindoscan, from its native sovereign, and established there a 
 colony with every reasonable prospect of success ; but the place was 
 several times taken from them by the Dutch and the English, until, 
 finally, it was restored at the treaty of Paris in 1815, and is now the 
 principal French settlement on the Asiatic continent. 
 
 20. In the latter part of the sixteenth century the English began to 
 turn their attention to the commerce of the East Indies ; arid in the year 
 1600 a company of London merchants, known as the London East India 
 Company, obtained a charter from queen Elizabeth, giving to them the 
 exclusive right of trading with those distant countries. During the 
 seventeenth century the London company made little progress in ef- 
 fecting settlements in the Indies ; and at the close of that period, a 
 small part of the island of Java, 2 Fort St. George at Madras, 3 the 
 island of Bombay, 4 and Fort William erected at Calcutta 6 in 1699, 
 
 rated by Mozambique Channel. Soon after the peace of 1815 the French formed several small 
 colonies on the eastern coast of the island ; and from 1818 to 1825 the English missionaries had 
 some success in converting the natives ; but since the latter period the missionaries have been 
 forbidden to approach the island, and Madagascar may now be reckoned among the barbarous 
 countries of eastern Africa. 
 
 1. Pondicherry is a town of Hindostan, on the south-eastern coast, eighty milea south-west 
 from Madras. Population about flfty-flve thousand. The French possessions in India, com- 
 prising Pondicherry, Chandernagore, Karical in the Carnatic, Mahe in Malibar, and Yanaon in 
 Orissa, with the territory attached to each, have a total population of about one hundred and 
 sixty-six thousand, of whom one thousand are whites. 
 
 2. Java is a large island of the Asiatic archipelago, south of Borneo, belonging principally to 
 the Dutch, and the centre, as well as the most valuable, of their possessions in the East. Area, 
 a little less than that of the State of New York. Population between five and six millions. 
 The Portuguese reached Java in 1511, and the Dutch in 1595. The latter founded Batavia in 
 1619. In 1811 Java was taken by a British force, and held till 1816, when, in pursuance of the 
 treaty of Paris, it was restored to the Dutch. 
 
 3. Madras is a large city on the south-eastern coast of Hindostan, eight hundred and seventy 
 miles south-west from Calcutta. Population upwards of four hundred thousand. Madras ia 
 badly situated, has no harbor, and is almost wholly unapproachable by sea. It was the first 
 acquisition made in India by the British, who obtained it by grant from the rajah of Bijnagur, 
 in 1639, with permission to erect a fort there. The fort was besieged in 170-2 by one of Aurung- 
 uebe's generals ; and in 1744 by the French, to whom it surrendered after a bombardment of 
 three days. It was restored to the English at the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, and successfully sus- 
 tained a memorable-siege by the French under Lally in 1758-9 ; since which it has experienced no 
 hostile attack. Madras is the capital of the British presidency of the same name, which embraces 
 the whole of South Hindostan, extending about five hundred miles north from Cape Comorin. 
 
 4. Bombay is built on an island of the same name, on the western coast of Hindostan, ten 
 hundred and fifty miles south-west from Calcutta. Population about two hundred and forty 
 thousand. In 1530 Bombay was obtained by the Portuguese from a Hindoo chief: by them it 
 was ceded to Charles II., in 1661, as part of queen Catherine's dowry ; and in 1668 it was 
 transferred, by the king, to the East India Company, at an annual rent of ten pounds sterling 
 Soon ifter it realized to the company a revenue of three thousand poundj a year. Bombay Is 
 the capital of the presidency of the same name. 
 
 5. Calcutta, the capital of the British dominions in the East, is situate*? on the eastern side
 
 395 MODERN HISTORY. [P.IRT IL 
 
 the whole inhabited by Inly a few hundred Europeans, formed the 
 extent of their East India possessions. Such was the feeble be- 
 ginning, and slow progress, of an association of merchants that " now 
 rules over an empire containing a hundred millions of subjects, raises 
 a tribute of more than three millions annually, possesses an army 
 of more than two hundred thousand men, has princes for its servants, 
 and emperors pensioners on its bounty." 
 
 21. The first successful attempt at American colonization by the 
 English was the settlement of Jamestown, in Virginia, in the year 
 1607. This was followed by the settlement of Plymouth in New 
 England, in 1620, by a band of Puritans, who had resolved to seek, 
 in the wilderness of America, that freedom of worship which their 
 native country denied them. During the same century the English 
 formed settlements in all the Atlantic States from Maine to Georgia, 
 the latter only excepted, which was not colonized until the year 
 1 733 ; the Dutch, who had settled New Amsterdam, now New York, 
 were conquered by the English in 1644 ; and at the same time the 
 Swedes, who had settled Delaware, and had subsequently been re- 
 duced by the Dutch, shared the fate of their masters. The history 
 of the British American colonies, during the seventeenth century, is 
 marked no less by the struggles of the colonists against the natural 
 difficulties of their situation, and by the Indian wars in which they 
 were often involved, than by their noble resistance to the arbitrary 
 and oppressive rule of the mother country. The early colonists, 
 those of New England especially, had left their homes on the other 
 side of the Atlantic, to seek, in the wilds of America, an asylum 
 where they might enjoy unmolested their religious faith and worship ; 
 and they brought with them to the land of their adoption, that spirit 
 of independence, and those principles of freedom, which laid the 
 foundation of American liberty. 
 
 22. The early history of these colonies is full of instruction to all, 
 in its lessons of patient endurance, and unyielding perseverance, ex- 
 alted heroism, individual piety, and public virtue ; but to American 
 citizens it possesses a peculiar interest, as the history of the develop- 
 ment and growth of those principles of free government which suo- 
 
 of the river Hoogly, the most western arm of the Ganges, about one hundred miles from Its 
 entrance into the Bay of Bengal. Resident population about two hundred and thirty thousand. 
 The English first made a settlement here in 1690, when Calcutta was but a small village, in- 
 habited chiefly by husbandmen. In ]756 a Bengal chief dispossessed the English of their settle- 
 ment, but it was retaken by Colonel Clive in the following year, since which it has been quief ly 
 retained by the British, and risen to its present degree of importance.
 
 CHAP. IV.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 397 
 
 ceedmg time has perfected to the happiness and glory of our country, 
 and the advancement of the cause of freedom throughout the world. 
 In a work of general history like the present we cannot hope to do 
 such a subject justice ; and instead of attempting here a brief and 
 separate compend of our early annals, it wilt be more satisfactory 
 and useful to refer the student to some of the numerous standard 
 works on Amercan history which are at all times accessible to him, 
 and with some one of which it is presumable every American youth 
 will early make himself familiar, before he enters upon the study of 
 the general history of nations.
 
 398 MODERN HISTORY. [PAUT IL 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 . tt'All OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION, AND CLOSE OF THE 
 REIGN OF LOUIS XIV. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. Pride and ambition of Louis XIV. Events that led to the "war of the 
 Spanish Succession." ENGLAND, GERMANY, AND HOLLAND, DECLARE WAR AGAINST FRANCE, 
 1702. 2. Causes that induced England to engage in the war. The opposing powers. Death 
 of king William. Queen Anne. 3. Opening of the campaign by Austria and England. The 
 French generals. 4. The CAMPAIGN OF 1702. Naval events. [Cadiz. Vigo Bay.] EVENTS 
 or 1703. 5. EVENTS or 1704. [Blenheim. Gibraltar.] 6. EVENTS or 1705 AND 170(5. French 
 Bosses. [Ramillies. Mons. Barcelona. Madrid.] 7. Overtures of peace. CAMPAIGN or 
 1707. [Almanza. Toulon.] EVENTS OF 1708. [Oudeuarde. Brussels.] 8. Sufferings of the 
 French in the year 1709. Haughtiness of the monarch. 9. Louis in vain seeks peace with 
 Holland. Battle of Malplaquet. [Malplaquet.] Successes of Louis in Spain. His domestic 
 misfortunes. 10. Death of the Austrian emperor. Importance of that event Decline of the 
 war. 11. TREATY OF UTRECHT, April llth, 1713. [Minorca. Newfoundland. Hudson's Bay 
 territory. St. Christopher. Radstadt. Lisle. Alsace.] 12. Death of Louis XIV. CHARACTER 
 or THE REIGN or Louis XIV. 
 
 II. PETER THE GREAT OF RUSSIA, AND CHARLES XII. OF SWEDEN. 
 
 1. THE NORTH AXD EAST OF EUROPE during the war of the Spanish succession. Beginning 
 of the reign of the Russian monarch. 2. Leading object with the Czar. He is induced to en- 
 gage in a war with Sweden. His allies. [Livonia. Riga.] 3. Sweden. Reported character 
 of Charles XII. The Swedish council, and declarations of Charles. Change in the king's 
 character. 4. BEGINNING or HOSTILITIES AGAINST SWEDEN, in the year 1700. [Sleswick. 
 Holstein. Narva.] Charles humbles Denmark. [Copenhagen.] 5. The Polish king. Charles 
 marches against Narva. 6. Signal DEFEAT or THB RUSSIANS AT NARVA. Remark of the 
 Czar. Superstition of the Russians. 7. The course pursued by Peter. Resolution of Charles. 
 8. VICTORIES or CHARLES IN THE YEAR 1702. [Courland. Warsaw. Cracow.] The Polish 
 king deposed. [Pultusk.] Charles declines the sovereignty of Poland. 9. Increase of his power 
 and influence. [Borysthenes.] His views, and plans, for the future. 10. Policy, and gradual 
 successes, of the Czar. [Neva. Ingria.] 11. MARCH or CHARLKS INTO RUSSIA, 1707-8. 
 [Smolensko.] 12. Passage of the Desna. [Desna.] Misfortunes of Charles. 13. Situation of 
 the Swedish army in the winter of 1708-9. Advance of Charles in the Spring. [Pultowa.] 14. 
 Siege and BATTLE or POLTOWA. Escape of Charles. [Bender. Campbell's description of the 
 catastrophe at Pultowa.] 15. Important effects of the battle of Pultowa. 16. Warlike views 
 still entertained by Charles. He enlists THE TURKS in his favor. Treaty between the Russians 
 and Turks. [Pruth.] 17. Lengthened stay of Charles in Turkey. RETURN OF CHARLES. 18. 
 Situation of Sweden on his return. Warlike projects of Charles. EVENTS OF 1715. [Stock- 
 holm.] Siege of Stralsund. Irruption into Norway. Project of a union with Russia. DEATH 
 or CHARLES, 1718. [Frederickshal!.] 19. Change in Swedish affairs. Peace with Russia. 
 [Nystad.] 20. CHARACTER or CHARLES THE TWELFTH. [Dr. Johnson's description of him.] 
 21. DEATH AND CHARACTER or PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 III. SPANISH WARS, AND WARS OF THE AUSTRIAN SUCCESSION. 
 
 1. Effects of the treaty of Utrecht. EUROPEAN ALLIANCE for guaranteeing the fulfilment of 
 the treaty Spain flnally compelled to accede to it. 2. WAR BETWEEN ENGLAND AMD SFASN
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 399 
 
 1739. Its causes. 3. CAUSES OK THE WAR OF THK AUSTRIAN SUCCESSION. [Pragmatic 
 sanction.] 4. Claims, and designs, upon the Austrian dominions. The position of England. 5. 
 Plan of THK COALITION AGAINST AUSTRIA. Invasion of Austria, 1741. The diet of Frank- 
 fort. [Frankfort.] Maria Theresa and the Hungarians. EVENTS OF 1742 AND 1743. [Munich. 
 Dottingen.] 6. Successes and rev-ses of Frederic of Prussia, 1744. The Austrian general. 7. 
 Death of Charles Albert, 1745. Successes of Marshal Saxe. [Fontenoy.] Treaty between 
 Prussia and Austria. Francis I. 8. Events in Italy in 1745. [Piedmont.] Events of the IN- 
 VASION OF B NGLAND, 1745-6. [Edinburgh. Preston-pans. Culloden.] Cruelties of the Eng- 
 lish. 9. EVENTS IN AMERICA, 1745-6. [Cape Breton.] 10. EVENTS OF 1746-7. TREATY or 
 AIX-LA-CHAPELLE, Oct. 1748. In what respect the result was favorable to all parties. 
 
 IV. THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR : 1756 63. 
 
 1. The EIGHT YEARS OF PEACE that followed the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. CAUSES THAT 
 THREATENED ANOTHER WAR. 2. East-India colonial difficulties between France and England. 
 3. North American difficulties. BEGINNING OF HOSTILITIES IN 1754. Braddock's defeat, 
 1755. 4. The connected interests of all the European States. The relations between Prussia 
 and Austria. EUROPEAN ALLIANCES growing out of them. 5. The threatened danger to 
 Prussia. 6. FIRST CAMPAIGN OF FREDERIC, 1756. 7. Declarations of war by France and 
 England, 1756. The first campaign. 8. The opposing forces, 1757. Victory of Frederic at 
 Prague, and defeat at Kolin. [Kolin.] General invasion of Prussia. Defeat of the English in 
 Germany. 9. Dangerous situation of Frederic. [Berlin.] Recall of the Russian army. 
 Frederic advances into Saxony. 10. Great victory of Frederic at Rossback. [Rossback.] 11. 
 Results of the battle. Frederic's treatment of the wounded and prisoners. 12. The English 
 and Hanoverians resume their arms. Affairs in Silesia. Victory of Frederic at Lissa. [Lissa.] 
 Anecdote of Frederic. 13. Results of the campaign of 1757. 14. Successes of the duke of 
 Brunswick, 1758. Frederic in Silesia escapes from the Austrians at Olmutz, and marches 
 against the Russians. [Olmutz.] 15. Battle of Zorndorf. [Zorndorf.] Anecdotes. Action 
 Of Hochkirchen. [Hochkirchen.] Results of the campaign. 16. Losses of the French in India 
 and America. 17. Opening of the campaign of 1730. Defeat of Frederic at Kunersdorf. 
 [Kunersdorf.] His loss in Bohemia. Result, to the Austrians. 18. The campaign of the duke 
 of- Brunswick. The results on the ocean and in the colonies. 19. Losses of Frederic in the 
 campaign of 1760. He defeats the enemy at Liegnitz and Torgau. [Liegnitz. Torgau.] 20. 
 The campaign in Germany. 21. Alliance between France and Spain. Losses of Spain and 
 France. [Cuba. Manilla. Belleisle. Guadaloupe.] 22. The campaign of 1761. Coldness 
 of England, and change in the Russian councils. 23. General PEACE OF 1703. The results, to 
 England to France to Prussia. [Honduras.] The MILITARY CHARACTER OF FREDERIC. 
 
 V. STATE OF EUROPE. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 
 
 I. GENERAL PEACE IN EUROPE. Results of the "Seven Years' War." Efforts of Frederic 
 for the good of his people. 2. FRANCE during the closing years of the reign of Louis XV. 
 Accession of Louis XVI. 3. Condition of RUSSIA. Her war with Turkey and Poland. [Mol- 
 davia and Wallachia.] DISMEMBERMENT OF POLAND, 1773. 4. STATE OF PARTIES IN ENGLAND. 
 Taxation. Resignation of the earl of Bute. 5. The Grenville ministry. The case of Mr 
 Wilkes. 6. The subject of AMERICAN TAXATION. The Stamp Act. 7. Misfortunes of England 
 In her attempts to coerce the Americans. 8. OPENING OF THE WAR WITH THE COLONIES. 9. 
 EUROPEAN RELATIONS OF ENGLAND. Aid extended to the Americans. 10. Capture of Bur- 
 goyne, 1777, and ALLIANCE BETWEEN FRANCE AND THE AMERICAN STATES. It. Begin- 
 ning of the WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND ENGLAND. 12. War in the West Indies. [Do- 
 minica. St. Lucia.] 13. Hostilities in the East Indies, and overthrow of the French power 
 there. 14. WAR BETWEEN SPAIN AND ENGLAND. Events of 1779. [St. Vincents. Grenada.] 
 15. Successes of Admiral Rodney, 1730. English merchant fleet captured by the. Spaniards. 
 16. The English claim of the right of search. ARMED NEUTRALITY AGAINST ENGLAND. 
 Principles of the Neutrality. General concurrence in them. 17. RUPTURE BETWEEN ENOLAND 
 AND HOLLAND. 18. Capture of St. Eustatia by the English. [St. Eustatia.] 19. The Spaniards 
 conquer West Florida. The French and English in the West Indies. [Tobago.] Naval battle 
 off the coast of Holland. [Dogger Bank.] 20. Results of the war between England ana
 
 400 MODERiN HISTORY. J.PAKT II. 
 
 her American colonies. Continuance of the war in Europe. Siege of Gibraltar, 1781, and de- 
 struction of the Spanish works. 21. Minorca taken by Spain, 178:1 Losses of tbe English in 
 the West Indies. [Bahamas.] Naval victory of the English. [Carribee islands.] 22. Con- 
 tinued siege of Gibraltar. Preparations for an assault. 23. The assault. 24. Generous conduc 
 of the British seamen. Results of the assault. 25. The WAR IN THE EAST INDIES. Account 
 of Hyder Ali. [Mysore. Seringapatam.] 26. Successes of Hyder AH and his son Tippoo 
 Saib, in 17eO. Events of 1781-2. 27. Tippoo concludes a treaty with the English, 1733. Re- 
 newal of the war, 1790. Defeat and death of Tippoo, 179D. 23. TREATY OF 1782. GENERAL 
 TREATY or 1783, between England, France, and Spain. Its terms. 29. Remarks upon the war 
 of the Revolution. 
 
 VI. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 I. The DEMOCRATIC SPIRIT of the American Revolution : its influence upon French society. 
 2. State of France at the time of the death of Louis XV. 3. Louis XVI. His character. 4. 
 FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES. Efforts of Turgot arid Neckar, and the opposition which they en- 
 countered. 5. The system of Calonne, and its results. 6. Brienne calls THE STATES-GKNERAL 
 7. Removal of Brienne, and restoration of Neckar. The policy of the court. 8. The general 
 agitation throughout France. The evils to be complained of. The clergy and the nobility. 
 The philosophic party. The calling of the States-general a revolutionary measure. Demands 
 of the Commons. Results of the elections. 9. New difficulty at the opening of the States- 
 general. Its final settlement. 10. Effect of the triumph of the third estate. REVOLUTIONARY 
 BTATB OF PARIS. Attack upon the Bastile, 1789. 11. Louis throws himself, for support, upon 
 the popular party. 12. The effect. Revolutionary movements throughout France. GRKAT 
 POLITICAL CHANGES. 13. Two months of quiet. FAMINE, AND MOBS, in Paris. The mob at 
 Versailles, and return of the Assembly and royal family to Paris. 14. Formation of a NEW 
 CONSTITUTION. MARSHALLING OF PARTIES. The Jacobin club. 15. Its character. Its 
 leaders. Mirabeau. His character, and death. 16. THE EMIGRANT NOBILITY. [Coblentz.] 
 ATTEMPTED ESCAPE OF THE ROYAL FAMILY, 179]. The king swears to support the new con. 
 Btitution. Dissolution of the "Constituent Assembly." 17. The "Legislative Assembly." 
 Chief parties in it. Growing influence of the Jacobins. 18. First acts of the legislative assem- 
 bly. Object of the Girondists. Demands of the Austrian emperor. WAR DECLARED AGAINST 
 AUSTRIA, 1792. Real causes of the war. 19. Collection of forces, and invasion of France. 
 The effects produced in France. 20. MASSACRE OF THE WTH OF AUGUST. Acts of the As- 
 sembly. Flight of La Fayette. Dumouriez. 21. MASSACRES OF SEPTEMBER. 22. Victories 
 of the French. [Jemappes. Marseilles Hymn.] 23. Decree of the National Convention. 
 TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF Louis XVI. 
 
 [1793.] 24. FALL OF THE GIRONDISTS. 25. Rule of the Jacobins. 26. THE REIGN or 
 TERROR. Execution of the queen. TRIUMPH OF INFIDELITY. 27. Divisions among the Jacobin 
 leaders. FALL OF THE DANTONISTS. 28. WAR AGAINST EUROPE. 29. Defection of Du- 
 mouriez. 30. Fate of Custine. 31. War on the Spanish frontier. In other quarters. 32. IN- 
 SURRECTION OF LA VENDEE. Victory of the Veudeans at Saumur, and defeat at Nantes. 
 [Saumur.] Repeated defeats of the Republicans. [Torfou.] 33. Cruelties of the Republicans. 
 The Vendeans cross into Brittany. [Cholet. Chateau Gonthier.] 34. Closing scenes of the 
 Vendean war. [Granville. Mans. Savenay. The Vendean leaders.] 35. INSURRECTIONS IN 
 THE SOUTH OF FRANCE. Marseilles and Lyons. 36. Siege of Toulon. Napoleon Bonaparte. 
 37. Results of the campaign of 1793. 
 
 [1794.] 38. Progress of the Revolution after the fall of Danton. 39. FALL OF ROBESPIERRE, 
 AND END OF THE REIGN OF TERROR. 40. Military condition of France. 41. THE ENGLISH VIC- 
 TORIOUS AT SEA, AND THE FRENCH ON TH LAND. [BlSCay.] 42. SECOND PARTITION OF PO- 
 
 LAND. 13. THIRD PARTITION OF POLAND. 
 
 [1795.] 44. DISSOLUTION OF THE FIRST COALITION AGAINST FRANCE. Austria, England, 
 and Russia. 45. Internal condition of France. THE NEW CONSTITUTION. 46. INSURRECTION 
 IN PARIS, suppressed by Napoleon. 47. Military events of 1795. 
 
 [1796.] 48. INVASION OF GERMANY by Jordan and Moreau. 49. THE ARMY or ITALY. Victo- 
 ries of Napoleon. [Montenotte. Millessimo. Lodi. Arcole. Mantua.] 50. DISTURBANCE* 
 in ENGLAND. Spain. English supremacy at sea. French ir vasion of Ireland. 
 
 [IT97.] 51. NAPOLEON'S AUSTRIAN CAMPAIGN. TREATY r CAMPO FORMIO. [Campo F^f-
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 401 
 
 mlo.] Losses of Italy. 52. Strife of parties, and ESTABLISHMENT op J'n ITAR-J DESPOTISM in 
 FRANCE. 
 
 [1709.] 53. PREPARATIONS FOB THE INVASION OF ENGLAND. EXPEDITION TO EGYPT. 54. 
 Preparations for the expedition. 55. Surrender of Malta. [Malta.] Storming of Alexandria. 
 56. Policy of Napoleon. [The Arab population. Cairo.] BATTLE OF THE PYRAMIDS. 57. 
 BATTLE OF THE NILE. 58. Remarkable energy of Napoleon. Conquest of Upper Egypt. 
 [1709.] SYRIAN EXPEDITION. 59. SIEGE OF ACRE. [Mount Tabor.] BATTLE OF Morinr 
 TABOR. [Nazareth.] GO. Return of Napoleon to Egypt. BATTLE OF ABOUKIR. 61. State of 
 affairs m Europe. 02. Napoleon's return to France. OVERTHROW OF THE DIRECTORY. [St. 
 Cloud.] NAPOLEON FIRST CONSUL. Changes of the Revolution. 
 
 1. WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION, AND CLOSE OF THE REIGN OF 
 Louis XIV. 1. The war which ended in the treaty of Ryswick had 
 not humbled the pride of Louis XIV., whose ambition soon involved 
 Europe in another war, known in history as the " War of the Spanish 
 succession." The immediate events that led to the war were the 
 following. On the death of Charles the Second of Spain, in the 
 year 1700, the two claimants of the Spanish throne were the arch- 
 duke Charles of Austria, and Philip of Anjou, nephew of the French 
 monarch. Both these princes endeavored, by their emissaries, to 
 obtain from Charles, then on a sick bed, a declaration in favor of their 
 respective pretensions ; but although the Spanish monarch was strong- 
 ly in favor of the claims of the arch-duke his kinsman, 
 
 the gold and the promises of Louis prevailed with the GEaM * A Ny D ' 
 Spanish nobles to induce their sovereign to assign by AND HOL- 
 will, to the duke of Anjou, the undivided sovereignty of 
 the Spanish dominions. The arch-duke resolved to sup- 
 port his claims by the sword, while the possible and not 
 improbable union of the crowns of France and Spain in 
 the person of Philip, after the death of Louis, was looked upon by 
 England, Germany, and Holland, as an event highly dangerous to the 
 safety of those nations ; and on the loth of May, 1702, these three 
 powers declared war against France, in support of the claims of the 
 arch-duke to the Spanish succession. 
 
 2. It was, doubtless, of very little importance to England, whether 
 an Austrian or a French prince became monarch of Spain ; but 
 when, on the death of the exiled James II., his son was acknowl- 
 edged king of England by the French court, the act was regarded 
 as an insult and a defiance to Great Britain ; the national animosity 
 was aroused, and king William engaged strenuously in the work of 
 forming a league against the ambition of France. England, Holland, 
 and Austria, were the leading powers of the coalition, while France 
 was aided by Bavaria alone. Already William was preparing to 
 
 26
 
 402 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II 
 
 take the field in person at the head of the allies, when a fall from 
 his horse occasioned a fever, which terminated his life in May 1702. 
 Queen Anne, who next ascended the throne of Great Britain, de- 
 clared her resolution to adhere to the policy of her predecessor. 
 
 3. The emperor of Austria began the war by pouring into Italy a 
 large army under the command of Prince Eugene, a Frenchman by 
 birth, who had early entered the Austrian service, where he had 
 gained distinction in the wars of the Turks. At the same time the 
 English duke of Maryborough, intrusted with the chief command of 
 the Dutch and English forces, entered on the campaign in Flanders. 
 To these generals was at first opposed marshal Villars; but the 
 complaints of the elector of Bavaria against him induced that able 
 general to resign his command. Marsin, Tallard, and Villeroy, suc- 
 ceeded him ; but the French generals, brought up under the despotic 
 authority of Louis, who required in his officers the quality of sub- 
 mission as well as the talent for command, were unable to cope with 
 Marlborough and Eugene, who had been bred in a school that en- 
 couraged the development of talent, by allowing a greater indepen- 
 dence of character. 
 
 4. The campaign of 1702 passed without any remarkable results : 
 ii THE Marlborough took a few towns in Flanders, and Eugene 
 
 CAMPAIGN in northern Italy, but on the Rhine the French gained 
 some successes : at sea a combined Dutch and English 
 fleet failed in an attack on Cadiz, 1 but succeeded in capturing and 
 destroying, in Vigo Bay, 8 a French and Spanish fleet that had taken 
 shelter there, laden with the treasures of Spanish America. 
 OF 1703 -"- n t ne s P rm g f 1703 the French succeeded in breaking 
 through the lines of the allies on the Rhine, thus trans- 
 ferring the seat of the war to the Danube, and making a threatening 
 demonstration against Vienna itself. 
 
 5. In- the spring of 1704 Marlborough, abandoning Flanders, 
 
 marched to the relief of the Austrian emperor, and having 
 J omec ^ P r i nce Eugene, on the 13th of August, near the 
 small village of Blenheim, 5 he won a decisive victory over 
 the French and Bavarians. Each army numbered about eighty 
 
 1 Cadiz is an important city and seaport of Andalusia, in southern Spain, sixty miles north* 
 west from Gibraltar. It is a very ancient city, having been founded by the Ca;xnagialans. 
 (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. Vigo Bay is on the western coast of Spain, a little north of Portugal. 
 
 3. Illen\ 'im is a small village of western Bavaria, on the Danube, thirty-three miles north- 
 eaat from Ulm. (Map No. XVII.)
 
 CIUP V,] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 403 
 
 thousand m >n, ai 1 the vanquished lost thirty thousand in killed, 
 wounded, and taken, while all their camp equipage, baggage, and ar- 
 tillery, became the prize of the conquerors. The loss of the latter 
 was about five thousand killed and eight thousand wounded. The 
 results of this battle obliged the French to evacuate Germany al- 
 together, abandon Bavaria, and retire behind the Rhine. In the 
 meantime the war continued in northern Italy ; Portugal joined the 
 coalition ; the arch-duke Charles of Austria, aided by an English 
 force, landed in the Spanish peninsula ; and an English and Dutch 
 fleet, commanded by Sir George Rooke, stormed the important fortress 
 of Gibraltar, 1 of which England has ever since retained the possession. 
 6. The year 1 705 passed away with varied success, the French 
 obtaining many advantages in Italy, while the allies were y EVENTS 
 generally victorious in Spain and on the ocean. In 1705 OF 
 a French force again penetrated into Germany ; but the 
 main army, of about eighty thousand men, commanded by marshal 
 Villeroy, advancing into the Spanish Netherlands, was met by an 
 inferior force under the duke of Marlborough, and utterly routed in 
 the decisive battle of Ramillies. 2 (May 23d, 1706.) The conse- 
 quences of the battle were the loss, to France, of all the Spanish 
 Netherlands, escept the fortified towns of Mons* and Namur. In 
 
 1. Gibraltar, the Calpe of the Greeks, formed, with Abyla on the African coast, the "Pillars 
 of Hercules." The fortress stands on the west side of a mountainous promontory or rock, pro- 
 jecting south into the sea about three miles, and being from one-half to three-quarters of a mile 
 in breadth. The southern extremity of the rock is called Europa Point. The north side of the 
 promontory, fronting the long narrow isthmus which connects it with the main land, is per- 
 pendicular, and wholly inaccessible. The east and south sides are steep and rugged, and ex- 
 tremely difficult of access, so as to render any attack upon them, even if they were not for- 
 tified, next to impossible, so that it is only on the west side, fronting the bay, where the 
 rock declines to the sea, and the town is built, that it can be attacked with the faintest pros- 
 pect of success. Here the fortificatious are of extraordinary extent and strength. The princi- 
 pal batteries are so constructed as to prevent any mischief from the explosion of shells. Vast 
 galleries have been excavated in the solid rock, and mounted with heavy cannon ; and com- 
 munications have been established between the different batteries by passages cut in the rock 
 to protect the troops from the enemy's fire. 
 
 At Gibraltar, the Arabians first landed in Spain, in the year 711. It was taken from them In 
 1302: in 1333 they retook it, but were finally deprived of it in 1462 by Heary IV. of Spain. 
 August 4th 1704 the British captured it, since which time it has been repeatedly besieged and, 
 assaulted, but without success. In 1729 Spain offered two millions sterling for the place, but 
 in vain. The last attempt made for its recovery was by France and Spain combined, in 1779, 
 during the war with England which grew out of the Avxerican Revolution. Eighty thousand 
 barrels of gunpowder were provided for the occasion, and more than one hundred thousand 
 men were employed, by land and sea, against the fortress. (M<ip No. XIII.) 
 
 2. Ramillies is a small village of Belgium, twenty-eight miles south-east from Brussels. (Maf 
 No. XV.) 
 
 3. Mons is a fortified town of Belgium, thirty4wo miles south- if eat from Brussels. (Map 
 No. XV.)
 
 404 MODERN HISTORY. [Tutr II 
 
 other quarters the campaign was equally disastrous to Louis. Bar- 
 celona 1 surrendered to the English ; even Madrid* submitted to the 
 allies; and prince Eugene, breaking through the French lines at 
 Turin, drove the enemy from Italy. 
 
 7. Louis now made overtures of peace ; but the allies, hoping to 
 
 reduce him lower, would not listen to them. The cam- 
 
 VI. CAM- . _ . ' .,...,. 
 
 PAIGNOF paign ot 1 707 m a measure revived his sinking fortunes. 
 1707. Q n t ne plain of Almanza 8 the French won a victory over 
 the allies, as complete as any that had been obtained during the war. 
 (April 1707.) This victory established Philip of Anjou on the 
 throne of Spain. In the same year prince Eugene was foiled in an 
 attempt on the port of Toulon. 4 In the following year, however, 
 (1708,) Marlborough and Eugene defeated a powerful 
 ^ renca arm y near tne village of Oudenarde, 6 in Flanders, 
 and recovered Ghent and Bruges,' which, a short time 
 before, had been surprised by the French. Again the frontier of 
 France lay completely open. 
 
 8. The year 1709 commenced with one of the most rigorous 
 
 winters ever known. Olives and vines, and many fruit 
 viii. 1709. . , 
 
 trees perished ; the sown gram was destroyed, and every- 
 thing portended a general famine. The French populace began to 
 
 1. Barcelona, the capital of Ca'alonia, is a city and seaport of Spain, on the Mediterranean, 
 three hundred and fifteen miles north-east from Madrid. It is supposed to have been founded 
 by the Carthaginians about two hundred years before the Christian era, and to have been 
 named from its founder Hamilcar Barcino. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. Madrid, the modern capital of Spain, is in the centre of the kingdom, and occupies the 
 site of the ancient Mantua Carpetanorum, a fortified town belonging to the Carpetani. It was af- 
 terwards called Jlfajoritum, and was taken and sacked by the Moors, who gave it ita present 
 name. .(My,p No. XIII.) 
 
 3. Almama is a town of Spain in the northern part of the province of Murcia, ninety-three 
 miles north-west from Carthagena. In the battle fought in the neighborhood of this town 
 April 25th, 1707, the French were commanded by the duke of Berwick. The allies, in the in- 
 terest of the arch-duke Charles, lost five thousand men k'lled on the field, and nearly ten thou- 
 sand taken prisoners. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 4. Toulon, the first naval port in France, is on the Mediterranean coast, thirty- two mile* 
 south-east from Marseilles. The town is strongly fortified, and has an excellent harbor. It U 
 wholly indebted for its importance as a great naval port, and strong military position, to Louis 
 X I V., who expended vast auras on its fortifications, and on the arsenal and harbor. (Map No. 
 XIII.) 
 
 5. Oudinarde is a town of Belgium thirty-three miles west from Brussels. In the battle of 
 July 1.1th, 1708, the dukes of Brunswick and Vendome commanded the French army. (Map 
 No. XV.) 
 
 6. Bruges is a town of Belgium, seven miles from the sea, and sixty miles north-west from 
 Brussels. At a very early period Bruges was a prosperous seat of manufacturing and com- 
 mercial industry. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it was the cent-'al empori- 
 um of the whole rommercial world, and, as the leading city of the Ha weatic confe leracy, had 
 resident consuls aid ministers from every kingdom ia Europe. (Maf No. XV.)
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 405 
 
 clamor from present sufferings, and the dismal prospect before them ; 
 but when the French parliament proposed to appoint deputies to 
 visit the provinces, buy corn, and watch over, the public peace, the 
 haughty monarch reprimanded them, and told them they had as 
 little to do with corn as with taxation. The magistrates were silent, 
 and lesisted from farther interference with the claims of the royal 
 prer jgative. 
 
 9. With the finances in disorder, commerce ruined, and agricul- 
 ture at a stand, Louis sought peace with Holland ; but the States, 
 slighting his envoys and his offers, repaid him all his past insults and 
 pride, and he was compelled to resume the war, or submit to conces- 
 sions degrading to himself and the nation. Again the chief command 
 of the French armies was given to marshal Villars, who fought with 
 the allies the battle of Malplaquet 1 (Sept. llth, 1709) ; but although 
 the latter lost the greatest number of men, the French lost the 
 honor of the day by being driven from the position which they had 
 chosen. The situation of Louis became desperate, when again the 
 successes of his arms in Spain restored him to security and confi- 
 dence ; but domestic misfortune fell upon him, and humbled his 
 pride more than all his military reverses had done. Most of the 
 near relatives of the king were cut off by sudden death, since at- 
 tributed to the small pox, but then ascribed to the agency of poison. 
 
 10. While these clouds were lowering upon France and her mon- 
 arch, an unexpected event changed the situations and views of all 
 parties. Early in 1711, the death of the emperor of Austria without 
 issue, and the succession of the arch-duke Charles, the claimant of 
 the Spanish crown, to the sovereignty of Austria, threatened a union 
 of the crowns of Spain and Austria in the person of one individual, 
 an event looked upon with as much dread as the union of France and 
 Spain in the person of Philip of Anjou. From this period the war 
 languished ; and when, by a change in English politics, Marlborough, 
 who had supported, so nobly, the glory of England, was disgraced, 
 and deprived of his command, the influence and support which Eng- 
 land had given to the war were taken away. 
 
 1 1. Conferences opened at Utrecht in the early part of 1712, and 
 on the 1 1th of April, 1713, the terms of a general peace were assented 
 
 1. Malplaquet (mal-plah'-ka) is a small town of France, near the border of Belgium, forty- 
 three miles south-west from Brussels. In the batlle fought here Sept. llth, 1709 the bloodiest 
 In the " War of the Spanish succession" the allies were commanded by Marlborough and 
 Eugene. The F rench army numbered seventy thousand ; the allies eighty thousand. The 
 allies lost twi Tity thousand in killed, and the French about ten thousand. (Map No. XV.)
 
 406 MODERN HISTOR1 . [PAttT IL 
 
 to bj all tlie belligerents except Austria. England was gratified 
 by the demolition of the port of Dunkirk, in the cession 
 OF of Gibraltar and Minorca, 1 together with Newfoundland,* 
 UTRECHT, Hudson's Bay Territory, 8 and the island of St. Christo- 
 pher. 4 Spain remained to Philip V. of Anjou, on his 
 i enouncing forever all right of succession to the crown of France. 
 The treaty of Radstadt, 6 concluded in 1714 between France and 
 Austria, completed that of Utrecht, and terminated the war, the 
 Austrian emperor receiving Naples, Milan, and Sardinia, together 
 with Spanish Flanders, in lieu of Spain, the Spanish monarchy 
 thus losing its possessions in Italy and the Netherlands. Louis re- 
 tained the fortress of Lisle 6 and French Flanders, while the Rhine was 
 acknowledged the frontier on the side of Alsace. 7 
 
 12. The treaties of Utrecht and Radstadt were the closing politi- 
 cal acts of the reign of Louis XIV., who breathed his last 
 
 X CHARAC~ 
 
 TEE OF THE * n September 1715, after a reign of seventy-seven years, 
 KEIGN OF or fifty-four from the expiration of the regency. Louis 
 was the most despotic monarch that ever reigned over a 
 civilized people. In the condition of France at the time of his ac- 
 cession, despotism was perhaps the only remedy against anarchy, 
 and it marks an overmastering spirit that the will of the monarch 
 alone was able to bend all minds to his purposes. The nobility 
 stood submissive before the throne, the people, in silence and suf- 
 fering, far beneath it. But the reign of Louis has shown that des- 
 potism is not compatible with modern civilization, for everything 
 was frozen under its chilling touch ; and although letters flourished 
 
 1. Minorca. See Balearic Isles, p. 152. 
 
 2. Newfoundland, a large island of North America, off the Gulf of St. Lawrence, is celebrated 
 for its fisheries. Since the peace of Utrecht, in 1713, it has remained in the possession of 
 England. 
 
 3. Hudson's Bay Territory embraced a large but indefinite extent of country, mostly on the 
 west side of Hudson's Bay. The Hudson's Bay Company has long monopolized nearly all the 
 fur trade of British North America. 
 
 4. St. Christopher's is an island of the West Indies, nearly two hundred miles south-east from 
 Porto Rico. It was discovered and named by Columbus, but was first settled by the English 
 iu 1623. 
 
 5. Radstadt is a small Austrian town one hundred and forty-five miles south-west from 
 Vienna. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 6. Lisle is a strongly-fortified city of France, near the Belgian frontier, one hundred and 
 twenty-four miles north-east from Paris. Lisle is supposed to ha re been founded in 640. It 
 successively belonged to the counts of Flanders, the kings of Fr ince, and the dukes of Bur 
 gundy. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 7. Jllsace was an eastern province of France, on the Rhine. In ancient times it was a GeN 
 man duchy, and the inhabitants still speak German. Stra'burg is the chief city. (Map No, 
 XIII.)
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 407 
 
 among the favored few, there was no prosperity, no learning, no life, 
 among the people ; and had the progress of science, and the devel- 
 opment of intellect, been checked by the strong arm of authority, 
 France would have needed nothing more to reduce her to a state of 
 oriental simplicity and degradation. 
 
 II. PETER THE (TREAT OF RUSSIA, AND CHARLES XII. OF SWEDEN. 
 1. While the "war of the Spanish succession" engaged 
 the attention of the south and west of Europe, casting a AND EAST 
 shadow of gloom on the declining years of Louis XIV., OF EUROPE - 
 the northern and eastern divisions of Christendom were occupied 
 with the rivalry of two of the most extraordinary men that the 
 world has ever known Peter the Great of Russia, and Charles XII. 
 of Sweden. In the preceding chapter we noticed the auspicious 
 events which marked the beginning of the reign of the Russian 
 monarch, just at the close of the seventeenth century, and which 
 promised to his kingdom a rapid augmentation of power, and the 
 opening of a new era in civilization. The results remain to be de- 
 veloped in the present chapter. 
 
 2. It was a leading object of the Czar, a to make Russia a great 
 commercial nation ; and for the success of his plans a free and unin- 
 terrupted communication with the ocean, by way of the Baltic Sea, 
 was deemed of the greatest importance ; but Sweden possessed the 
 entire eastern coast of the Baltic, together with the gulfs of Finland 
 and Livonia, 1 thus hemming in the Czar in the only quarter where 
 his ardent wishes might, otherwise, be accomplished. During his 
 travels he had been rudely refused admission into the citadel of 
 Riga, 3 which had once belonged to Russia ; and this circumstance 
 afforded him a sufficient pretext for engaging in a war with Sweden 
 for the recovery of that valuable seaport. The kings of Denmark 
 and Poland, both of whom had suffered from the Swedish arms, were 
 easily induced to form an alliance with the Czar for dividing between 
 themselves the possessions wrested from their predecessors. 
 
 3. Sweden was at this time (1700) governed by Charles XII., a 
 prince only eighteen years of age who was reported by the ministers 
 
 1. Finland and I.ivonia are the two eastern gulfs of the Baltic. St. Petersburg, at the eastern 
 extremity of the former, and Riga, near the head of the latter, are now the two most important 
 cities and ports in the Russian dominions. 
 
 & Riga is a strjngly-fortified e' v of Russia, situated on the river Dwina, nine muei from iu 
 entrance into the Gulf of Livonia. Population, seventy thousand. 
 
 a. The title given by the Russians to their king, and pronounced Tzar.
 
 408 MODERN HISTORY. [PABT U 
 
 of foreign courts to be of a haughty and indolent disposition, and 
 who had thus far shown no inclination for public business, nor evinced 
 any ardor for military pursuits. But Charles was neither Known to 
 others nor did ho know himself until the storm that suddenly arose 
 in the north gave him an opportunity of displaying his concealed 
 talents. While the Swedish council, alarmed by the dangers whico 
 threatened the country, were debating in his presence the terms at 
 an accommodation with their enemies, the young prince suddenly 
 arose, and with a grave and determined air declared that his reso l .- 
 tion was fixed ,--" that he would never enter upon an unjust war, but 
 that he would attack any power that evinced hostile intentions, anrt 
 that, in the present instance, he hoped to conquer the first enemy au<l 
 to strike terror into the rest." From that moment Charles renounced 
 his former indolent habits and frivolous amusements, and, placing 
 before himself the characters of Alexander and Caesar, resolved to 
 imitate those heroes in everything but their vices. The vain an- 
 trifling boy suddenly became the stern, vigilant, and ambitious soldier 
 of fortune. 
 
 4. Almost simultaneously, early in the year 1700, the Czar and 
 ii. BEGIN- his allies began hostilities by invading the Swedish terri- 
 NING OF tories. The Danes fell upon Sleswick, 1 a city of H(J- 
 
 IIOSTI LITI ES 
 
 AGAINST stein, friendly to Sweden ; the king of Poland invested 
 SWEDEN. Riga ; while the Czar, with eighty thousand men, laid 
 siege to Narva. 2 Attacked by so many foes at once, Charles placed 
 himself at the head of his armies, and directed his first efforts against 
 the Danes, whom he compelled to purchase the safety of Copenhagen,' 
 their capital, by the payment of four hundred thousand dollars, and 
 soon after to sign a peace, by which Charles was indemnified for all 
 the expenses of the war. Thus the youthful Swede, by his vigorous 
 conduct, humbled a powerful adversary in a campaign of six weeks, 
 
 1. Sleficick, now included in the duchy of the same name, is a city and seaport town of Den 
 mark, seventy miles north-west from Hamburg. Holstein is the southern duchy or province 
 of Denmark, extending to the Elbe, and having the duchy of Sleswick on the north. At the 
 period above-mentioned the city of Sleswick was included in the territories of the duke of 
 Holstein, who, having married a sister of Charles XII., and being oppressed by the king of 
 Denmark his master, had fled to Stockholm to implore assistance. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Jfaroa. is a small town of Russia on the river Narova, eiaiht miles from its entrance into 
 the Gulf of Livonia, and eighty-one miles south-west from St. Petersburg. 
 
 3. Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, is a well-fortified city, built principally on the eastern 
 coast of the island of Zealand, and partly also on the contiguous small island of Amak, tha 
 channel between them forming the port. It was founded in 1 108. Its environs are celebrated 
 for their beauty. (Map No. XIV.)
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 409 
 
 and rendered his own name, at the age of eighteen, the terror of the 
 North, and the admiration of Europe. 
 
 5. In the meantime the king of Ptland, who had laid siege to 
 Riga, being thwarted by the activity of its veteran commander, the 
 same who had refused the Czar permission to enter the citadel, 
 availed himself of a plausible pretext for withdrawing his forces. 
 Charles was now left at liberty to turn his attention to the most pow- 
 erful of the confederates, the Russian monarch, who, at the head of 
 eighty thousand men and one hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, had 
 been engaged ten weeks in besieging the town of Narva, which was 
 defended by a garrison of scarcely one thousand soldiers. 
 
 6. In the month of November Charles landed on the coast with 
 only twenty thousand men, and proceeded rapidly towards 
 
 the town, at the head of less than one-half of his actual OF THE 
 force, driving before him more than thirty thousand RUSSIANS 
 Russians who had been sent out to impede his march. 
 Scarcely allowing his weary troops a moment's repose, and without 
 waiting for the remainder of his little army, Charles resolved to 
 attack the enemy in their iutrenchments : in three hours the camp 
 was forced on all sides : eighteen thousand Russians were killed, be- 
 sides a great number drowned in attempting to cross the river ; and 
 on the next day thirty thousand who had surrendered were dismissed 
 to their homes. (Nov. 30th. Dec. 1st, 1700.) This extraordinary 
 victory did not cost the Swedes over six hundred men. When tho 
 Czar, who was absent from Narva at the time, heard of this disaster, 
 he was not disheartened, but attributing the result to the right cause, 
 the ignorance and barbarism of his subjects, he said : " I know very 
 well that the Swedes will have the advantage of us for a considerable 
 time ; but they will at length teach us to become conquerors." The 
 ignorant Russians, unable to account for a victory gained by human 
 means, over such disparity of numbers, imagined the Swedes to be 
 magicians and sorcerers ; and a form of prayer, composed by a Rus- 
 sian bishop, was read in their churches, imploring St. Nicholas, the 
 patron of Muscovy, to be their champion in future, and to drive the 
 troop of Northern wizards away from their frontiers. 
 
 7. But Peter, disregarding both St. Nicholas and the priests, pur- 
 sued steadily the course which he had marked out, and, withdrawing 
 to his own dominions, occupied IH& time in equipping a fleet, in re- 
 cruiting and disciplining a new army, in carrying out his project of 
 uniting the Baltic, Caspian, and Euxine seas, and in introducing nu-
 
 410 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 merous improvements for civilizing his barbarous subjects. Charles, 
 on the contrary, neglectful of the welfare of his own country, and of 
 the proceedings of the Czar, had resolved never to return home until 
 he had driven from the throne of Poland the newly-elected sovereign, 
 and ally of Peter, Augustus of Saxony. 
 
 8. Having wintered at Narva, Charles next drove the Poles and 
 Saxons from lliga, defeated his enemies on the western bank of the 
 
 Dwina, overran Courland 1 and Lithuania, entered War- 
 
 IV VICTORIES , .,, ... j . 1 .1 T 1 1 *n^ 
 
 OF CHARLES saw without opposition, and at length, in July 1 702, 
 IN THE YEAR defeated Augustus in a bloody battle fought on a vast 
 plain between Warsaw and Cracow. 3 A second victory 
 gained by Charles at Pultusk 4 in the following year (May 1st, 1703) 
 completed the humiliation of Augustus, who was formally deposed 
 by the Polish diet, while the crown was soon after given to Stanislaus 
 Leczinski, who had been nominated by the king of Sweden. (January 
 1704.) Charles, at the head of a victorious army, might easily have 
 assumed the sovereignty of Poland, to which he was advised by his 
 ministers, but he declared that he felt more pleasure in bestowing 
 thrones upon others than in winning them for himself. 
 
 9. Charles soon reduced the Saxon States, the hereditary domin- 
 ions of the unfortunate Augustus ; his ships were masters of the 
 Baltic ; Denmark, restrained by the late treaty, was prevented from 
 offering any active interference with his plans ; the German emperor, 
 engaged in the War of the Spanish succession, was afraid of offend- 
 ing him ; and a detachment of thirty thousand Swedes kept the 
 Russians in check towards the east : so that the whole region from 
 
 1. Courland is a province of Russia, on the Baltic coast, north of the ancient Lithuania. 
 (Se Lithuania, p. 312.) 
 
 2. Warsaw, the capital of Poland, is on the west bank of the Vistula, six hundred and fifty 
 miles southwest from St. Petersburg, and three hundred and thirty-three miles east from Berlin, 
 the Prussian capital. Population, about one hundred and forty thousand. In 1795, in the third 
 partition of Poland, Warsaw was assigned to Prussia : in 1806 it was made the capital of the 
 grand-duchy of Poland ; and in 1815 it became the capital of the new kingdom of Poland, that 
 was united to the crown of Russia, but with a separate constitution and administration. 
 Wa?saw was the principal seat of the ill-fated Polish revolution of -1831. See p. 527. (Maf 
 No. XVII.) 
 
 3. Cracow is on the north bank of the Vistula, one hundred and sixty miles south-west from 
 Warsaw, and two hundred north-east from Vienna. Previously to the seventeenth century 
 Cracow was the metropolis of the kingdom of Poland. Most of the Polish kings, as.d many 
 other illustrious men, have been buried in the cathedral of Cracow. Among others it con-tain* 
 the tombs of Casimir the Great, of John Sobieski the deliverer of Poland, and of the " last of 
 he Poles," Kosciusko and Poniatowski. About a mile west of the city is an artificial moun^ 
 .f earth, one hundred and fifty feet in height, erected to the memory of Kosciusko. (Map No. 
 XVII.) 
 
 4. Pullnsk is forty miles north of Warsaw, on the western bank of a small tributary of the 
 Vistula. (Map No XVII.)
 
 CHAI 7.J EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 411 
 
 the German Ocean almost to the mouth of the Borysthenes, 1 and 
 even to the gates of Moscow, was held in awe by the sword of the 
 conqueror. All Europe was filled with astonishment at the arbitrary 
 manner in which he had deposed the king of Poland ; while in the 
 meantime Charles himself was indulging in the most extravagant 
 views of future conquests and glory. One year he thought sufficient 
 for the conquest of Russia : the pope of Rome was next to feel his 
 vengeance, for having dared to oppose the concession of religious lib- 
 erty to the German Protestants, in whose behalf Charles had inter 
 ested himself; and the youthful hero had even despatched officers 
 privately into Egypt and Asia, to take plans of the towns, and ex- 
 amine into the resources, of those countries. 
 
 10. The Czar, in the meantime, had not been an idle spectator of 
 the progress of the Swedish conqueror. By .keeping large bodies of 
 his troops actively engaged on the Swedish frontiers, he gradually 
 accustomed them to the presence of the enemy, over whom he gained 
 several little advantages ; and having driven the Swedes from both 
 banks of the Neva, 1 in the year 1701 he laid the foundations of St. 
 Petersburg, in the heart of his t new conquests, and by his judicious 
 measures protected the rising city from the attacks of the Swedish 
 generals. During the year 1704 he gained possession of all Ingria; 3 
 the next year he entered Poland at the head of sixty thousand men ; 
 but the advance of Charles from Saxony soon obliged him to retire 
 again towards the Russian territories. 
 
 11. In the autumn of 1707, Charles began his march eastward, 
 with the avowed object of the conquest of Russia, driving 
 
 V MARCH OF 
 
 the Russians back to the eastern banks of the Dnieper, CHARLES 
 then the dividing line between Russia and Poland. The INTO 
 Czar, seeing his own dominions threatened with war, 
 which must put a stop to the vast plans which he had formed for the 
 improvement of his people, now offered terms of peace, but Charles, 
 intoxicated with success, only replied, " I will treat at Moscow." 
 Peter, resolving not to act the part of another Darius, wisely deter- 
 mined to check the career of the invaders by breaking up the roads 
 
 1. Borysthenes, see Dnieper, p. 30. 
 
 2. The Neva is the stream by which Lake Ladoga discharges ita surplus waters into the Gulf 
 of Finland. St. Petersburg is built at its entrance into the Gulf. 
 
 3. Ingria, was a province extending about one hundred and thirty miles along the southern 
 bank of the Neva and the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland. In 1G17 the Swedes took U 
 from the Russians, but in 1700 the latter reconquered a part of it, and in 1703 built St Peters- 
 burg within its limits.
 
 412 MODERN HISTORY. [PAB.T IL 
 
 and desolating the country ; and Charles, after crossing the Dnieper, 
 and penetrating almost to Smolensko, 1 found it impracticable to con- 
 tinue his march in the direction of the Russian capital. (1708.) His 
 army, exposed to the risk of famine, and the incessant attacks of the 
 enemy, was slowly wasting away ; yet, instead of falling back upon 
 Poland, he adopted the extraordinary resolution of passing into the 
 Ukraine, whither he had been invited by Mazeppa, a Pole by birth, 
 aod chief of the Cossacks, but who had resolved to throw off his al- 
 legiance to the Czar, his master. 
 
 12. A march of twelve days, amid almost incredible and unpar 
 alleled hardships, brought the Swedes to the river Desna, 2 where 
 Charles expected to meet his new ally with a body of thirty thousand 
 men ; but, instead of this, he was compelled to force the passage of 
 the stream against a Russian army. The Czar, having been in- 
 formed of the treason of Mazeppa, had disconcerted his schemes by 
 the punishment of his associates ; and the unfortunate chief appeared 
 in the Swedish army rather as a fugitive than as a powerful prince 
 bringing succors to his ally. Charles soon after learned of a still 
 greater misfortune that had befallen him, the loss of a large convoy 
 and reenforcement expected from Poland. 
 
 13. In the midst of one of the severest winters ever known in 
 Europe, (1703-9) the small Swedish army, now reduced to less than 
 twenty thousand men, found itself in the midst of a hostile and al- 
 most desolate country, cut off from all resources, and threatened 
 with an attack from nearly a hundred thousand Russians, who were 
 gradually concentrating upon their victims. Yet the iron heart of 
 the Swede did not a moment relent at the sufferings of his soldiers, 
 although in one day he beheld two thousand of them drop dead be- 
 fore him, from the effects of cold and hunger ; nor had he relinquished 
 the design of penetrating to Moscow. On the opening of spring he 
 advanced to the town and fortress of Pultowa,* in the hope of seiz- 
 ing the magazines of the Czar, and opening a passage into the heart 
 of the Russian territory. 
 
 1 4. Toward the end of May Charles invested Pultowa, but while 
 
 1. Smolensko is a Russian town on the eastern bank of the Dnieper, two hundred and thirty 
 miles south-west from Moscow. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. The Desna is an eastern tributary of the Dnieper, which enters that river a little above 
 Kwv. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. Pultowa is a fortified town of Russia, on the river Worskla, an eastern tributary of the 
 Dnieper, two hundred miles south-east from Kiev, and four hundred and fifty south-west from 
 Moscow. In commemoration of the victory of Pultowa the Russians have erected a column In 
 the city, and an obelisk on the field of battle.
 
 CHAP. V.J EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 413 
 
 he was pressing the siege with great vigor, on the 15th of June the 
 Czar appeared before the place with an army seventy 
 thousand strong, and, in spite of the exertions of the ^ p ULT0 ^ A 
 Swedes, succeeded in throwing a strong reenforcement 
 into the place. When Charles discovered the manoeuvre by which 
 this had been effected, he could not forbear saying, " I sec well that 
 we have taught the Muscovites the art of war " On the eighth of 
 July a general action was brought on between the two armies, the 
 Czar commanding his troops in person, while Charles, unable to walk, 
 owing to a severe wound he had some days before received in the 
 heel, was carried about the field in a litter, with a pistol in one hand 
 and his drawn sword in the other. The desperate charge of the 
 Swedes broke the Russian cavalry, but the Russian infantry acted 
 with great steadiness, and restored the honor of the day. The Czar 
 received a musket ball through his hat ; his favorite general. Menzi 
 koff, had three horses killed under him ; and the litter in which 
 Charles was carried was shattered in pieces by a cannon ball. But 
 neither the courage nor the discipline of the Swedes could avail against 
 the overwhelming numbers of their antagonists; and after a dread 
 ful battle of two hours' duration the Swedish army was irretrievably 
 ruined. Charles escaped with about thi.ee hundred horsemen to the 
 Turkish town of Bender, 1 abandoning all his treasures to his rival, 
 including the rich spoils of Poland and Saxony. a 
 
 15. Thus in one day the king of Sweden lost the fruits of nearly 
 a hundred victories, and nine years of successful warfare. Nearly 
 
 1. Bender is now a Russian town, on the Dniester, in the province of Bessarabia, about fifty- 
 eight miles from the Black Sea. In 1770 the Russians took this town by storm, and reduced it 
 to ashes. Four years later it was restored to Turkey, but was reconquered by the Russians in 
 1809, and was finally ceded to them, with the province of Bessarabia, by the treaty of Bucha- 
 rest, in 1812. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 a. The catastrophe of Pultowa is thus powerfully described by Campbell : 
 " Oh ! learn the fate that bleeding thousands bore, 
 Led by their Charles to Dnieper's sandy shore. 
 Faint from his wounds, and shivering in the blast, 
 The Swedish soldier sank and groaned his last ; 
 File after file the stormy showers benumb, 
 Freeze every standard sheet, and hush the drum ; 
 Horseman and horse confessed the bitter pang, 
 And arms and warrior fell witli hollow clang : 
 Yet, ere he sank in Nature's last repose, 
 Ere life's warm current to the fountain froze, 
 The dying man to Sweden turned his eye, 
 Thought of his home, and closed it with a sigh. 
 Imperial pride looked sullen on his plight, 
 And Charles beheld, nor shuddered at the sight.
 
 414 MODERN HISTORY. [PAKT IL 
 
 all Europe felt the effects of the battle of Pultowa : the Saxons 
 called for revenge on a prince who had pillaged and plundered their 
 country : Augustus returned to Poland at the head of a Saxon army, 
 while Stanislaus, knowing it was vain to resist, was unwilling to shed 
 blood in a useless struggle : Denmark, Russia, and Poland, entered 
 into a league against Sweden, and but for the interference of the Ger- 
 man emperor and the maritime powers, the Swedish monarchy would 
 have been rent in pieces. 
 
 16. Although Charles was now an exile from his country, relying, 
 for his support, upon the generosity of the Turkish sultan, yet he still en 
 tertained the romantic project of dethroning the Czar, and marching 
 back to Sweden at the head of a victorious army. He endeavored to raise 
 
 the Turks against his enemies ; and his prospects grew 
 ^TUEKS. E Bright or dark according as the wavering policy of the 
 Turkish divan was swayed by his intrigues, or by the 
 gold of Russia. At one time -the vizier promised to conduct him to 
 Moscow at the head of two hundred thousand men : war was declared 
 against Russia; and the forces of the two nations were assembled on 
 the banks of the Pruth. 1 (July 1711.) Here the Russian army, 
 surrounded by a greatly superior Turkish force, lost, in four days' 
 fighting, more than sixteen thousand men, when by the resolute sa- 
 gacity of the empress Catherine, who accompanied her husband 
 during the campaign, a secret treaty was concluded with the Turkish 
 commander, and Peter was rescued from the same fate that had be- 
 fallen his antagonist at Pultowa. 
 
 17. The Swedish monarch continued to linger in Turkey until 
 1714, still flattering himself that he should yet lead an Ottoman 
 army into Russia. Being at length dismissed by the sultan, and 
 ordered to depart, he still resolved to remain ; and arming his secre- 
 taries, valets, cooks, and grooms, in addition to his three hundred 
 guards, he bade defiance to a Turkish army of twenty-six thousand 
 men. After a fierce resistance, in which many of his attendants 
 were slain, he was captured, the Turks being careful not to endanger 
 his life. Another revolution in the Turkish divan revived the hopes 
 of Charles, and prolonged his stay ; but when he learned that the 
 Swedish senate intended to create a regent in his absence, and 
 
 1. T> e Pruth, rising in Gallicia, forms the boundary Wfetween Bessarabia and Moldavia, and 
 enters he Danube about fifty miles from the Black Sea. By the treaty of Adrianople in 1829, 
 it was stipulated that the I'ruth should continue to form the boundary between the Russian 
 and Turkish territories. (Map No. XVII.)
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 415 
 
 make peace with Denmark and Russia, his indignation at such pro- 
 ceedings induced him to return home. He was honorably 
 escorted to the Turkish frontiers ; but although orders 
 had been given that he should be treated in the Austrian 
 and German dominions with all due honor, he chose to travel in the 
 disguise of a courier, and toward the close of November 1714 reached 
 Stralsund, the capital of Swedish Pomerania. 
 
 18. At the time of the return of Charles, Sweden was in a truly 
 deplorable condition, surrounded by enemies without money, trade, 
 or credit her 'foreign provinces lost, and one hundred and fifty thou- 
 sand of her best soldiers slaves in Turkey and Siberia, or locked up in the 
 fortresses of Denmark and Poland. Yet Charles, instead of seeking 
 that peace which his kingdom so much needed, immediately issued 
 orders for renewing the war with redoubled vigor. During 
 the year 1715, the Danish and Russian fleets swept the 
 Baltic, and threatened Stockholm ;' and Stralsund, 
 though defended by Charles with his accustomed bravery, was com 
 polled to surrender after a siege of two months. On the night be 
 fore the surrender Charles made his escape in a small boat, safely 
 passing the batteries and fleets of the allies. In the following year 
 he made an irruption into Norway, but his army was driven back 
 greatly diminished in numbers. His attention was next occupied 
 with the scheme of his favorite minister, Baron Gortz, for uniting 
 the kings of Sweden and Russia in strict amity, and then dictating 
 the law to Europe. The plot embraced the restoration of Stanislaus 
 to the throne of Poland, and Charles was to have the command of a 
 combined Swedish and Russian army of invasion, for establishing the 
 Pretender (son of James II.) on the throne of England. The Czar 
 seemed not av-erse to the project, and a conference of the ministers 
 of the two nations had already been appointed for making the final 
 arrangements, when the death of the king of Sweden rendered abor- 
 tive a revolution that might have thrown all Europe into a state of 
 political combustion. In the autumn of 1718 Charles 
 had invaded Norway a second time, and laid siege to *" DE ' 
 Frederickshall ;* but while engaged in viewing the works 
 
 1 Stockholm, the capital city, and principal commercial emporium of Sweden, is built partly 
 cn a number of islands and partly on the main land, at the junction of the .Lake Mielar with 
 the Baltic, four hundred and forty miles a little south of west from St. Petersburg. It was 
 founded in the thirteenth century, but was not recognized as the capital till the seventeenth, 
 previously to whicn Upsala had been the seat of the court. (Map No. XIV.) 
 
 2. Frederickshall is a maritime town of Norway, near the north-east angle of the Skagger- 
 rack, fifty-seven miles south-east from Christiana, The town spreads irregularly around a per-
 
 416 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 m the midst of a tremendous fire from the enemy, he was struck 
 dead by a ball from the Danish batteries. (Dec. 1718.) 
 
 19. The death of Charles produced an entire change in the affairs 
 of Sweden. The late king's sister was declared queen by the volun- 
 tary choice of the States of the kingdom ; but the last reign had 
 taught them a severe lesson, and they compelled their new sovereign 
 to take a solemn oath that she would never attempt the establish- 
 ment of arbitrary power. The project of a union with Russia was 
 at once abandoned, and the new government united its forces to those 
 of England against the Czar. For a while the Russian fleet desolat- 
 ed the coasts of Sweden, but in 1721 peace was established between 
 the two powers by the treaty of Nystad. 1 Russia gained thereby a 
 large accession of territory on the shores of the Baltic, and dominion 
 over the Gulf of Finland, which Peter had purchased as a highway 
 of commerce to the ocean, with the toils and perils of twenty years of 
 warfare. 
 
 20. Charles the Twelfth, at the time of his death, was little more 
 
 than thirty-six years of age, one-half of which had been 
 
 , spent amid the turmoil of arms, or wasted in foreign 
 
 CHARACTER, * 
 
 exile. War was his ruling passion ; but the only ob- 
 ject of his conquests seemed to be the satisfaction of bestowing their 
 fruits upon others, without any apparent wish to enlarge his own do 
 minions. After all his achievements, nought but the memory of his 
 renown survives him ; for all the acts of his reign sprung from a 
 misdirected ambition, and not one of them was conducive to the per- 
 manent welfare of his country. " He was rather an extraordinary 
 than a great man," says Voltaire, " and more worthy to be admired 
 than imitated. His life ought to be a lesson to kings, how much a 
 pacific and happy government is preferable to so much glory." a 
 
 pendicular rock four hundred feet in height, on which is the strong fortress of Frederickstein, 
 at the siege of which Charles XII. was killed. 
 
 It was doubted for awhile whether the king met his death by a ball from the fortress, or from 
 .in assassin in the rear ; but there seem to be no good grounds for supposing lhat treachery had 
 anything to do with the matter. Dr. Johnson has availed himself of the suspicion in his ad- 
 mirable description of ihe character of the Swedish warrior. The hat, clothes, buff-belt, boots ( 
 fee., which Charles wore when he was shot, are still preserved in tho arsenal of Stockholm. 
 
 1. JVystad is a town of Finland, on the eastern coast of the Baltic, one hundred and fifty 
 miles north-east from Stockholm. 
 
 a. The following is Dr. Johnson's description of the character of Charles XII. 
 "On what foundation Btaiids the warrior's pride, 
 How just his hopes, let Swedish Charles decide. 
 A frame of adamant, u soul of fire, 
 No dangers fright him, and no labors tiro ;
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 417 
 
 21. The Czar Peter, or, as he is usually called in history, Peter 
 the Great, died in 1725, seven years after the death of X u. DEATH 
 his great rival the king of Sweden. Through a life of AND 
 
 , . . , , CHARACTER 
 
 restless activity he labored tor the improvement and OF PETER 
 prosperity of his country ; and while Charles left behind THE G&EAT. 
 him nothing but ruins, Peter the Great may truly be regarded as the 
 founder of an empire. The ruler of a barbarous people, he early 
 saw the advantages of civilization, and by the measures he adopt- 
 ed for reforming his empire he truly merited the epithet of GREAT. 
 Yet it has been truly said of him that although he civilized his sub- 
 jects, he himself remained a barbarian ; for the sternness, or rather 
 the ferocity, of his disposition, spared neither age nor sex, nor his dear- 
 est connexions. So conscious was he of his frailties that he was accus- 
 tomed to say, " I can reform my people, but I cannot reform myself." 
 He never learned the lessons of humanity ; and his sublime but un- 
 cultivated genius continually wandered without a guide. It is a high, 
 and just aulogium of his character to say that " his virtues were his 
 own, and his defects those of education and country." 
 
 O'er love, o'er fear, extends his wide domain, 
 
 Unconquered lord of pleasure and of pain ; 
 
 No joys to him pacific sceptres yield, 
 
 War sounds the trump, he rushes to the field ; 
 
 Behold surrounded kings their powers combine, 
 
 And one capitulate, and one resign ; 
 
 Peace courts his hand, but spreads her charms in vain ; 
 
 ' Think nothing gained,' he cries ' till naught remain ; 
 
 On Moscow's walls, till Gothic standards fly, 
 
 And all be mine beneath the polar sky.' 
 
 The march begins in military state, 
 
 And nations on his eye suspended wait ; 
 
 Stern famine guards the solitary coast, 
 
 And winter barricades the realms of frost : 
 
 He comes ; nor want, nor cold, his course delay ; 
 
 Hide, blushing Glory, hide Pultowa's day. 
 
 The vanquished hero leaves his broken band*, 
 
 And shows his miseries in distant lands; 
 
 Condemned a needy supplicant to wait 
 
 While ladies interpose, and slaves debate. 
 
 But did not chance at length her error mend 7 
 
 Did no subverted empire mark his end ? 
 
 Did rival monarchs give the fatal wound ? 
 
 Or hostile millions nress him to the ground? 
 
 His fall was destine, to a barren strand, 
 
 A petty fortress, anc a duiiiuu.i hand : 
 
 He left the name, at ivhich the world grew put. 
 
 To paint a moral, or adorn a tale." 
 
 27
 
 418 MODERN HISTORY [PART IL 
 
 III. SPANISH WARS, AND WARS OF THE AUSTRIAN SUCCESSION. 
 1. The treaty of Utrecht in 1713, which closed the war of the Spanish 
 succession, had given pacification to southern and west- 
 ern Eur P e > ty defining the territorial limits of the 
 belligerents in such a manner as to preserve that bal- 
 ance of power on which the peace of Europe depended. The in- 
 triguing efforts of Spain in contravention of that portion of the 
 treaty by which Philip V. renounced forever all right of succession 
 to the crown of France, induced England and Holland, in 1717, to 
 unite with France in forming a Triple Alliance guaranteeing the ful- 
 filment of the treaty; but during the same year a Spanish fleet, 
 entering the Mediterranean, quickly reduced the island of Sardinia, 
 which had been assigned to Austria ; and in the following year an- 
 other fleet and army captured Sicily, which had been adjudged to 
 the duke of Savoy. These acts of aggression roused the resentment 
 of Austria ; and by her accession to the terms of the Triple Alliance, 
 the Quadruple Alliance was formed, for the purpose of putting a 
 check to the ambition of Spain. A British squadron, under admiral 
 Byng, sailed into the Mediterranean and destroyed the Spanish fleet, 
 whilst an Austrian force passed into Sicily to contest with the Spanish 
 army the sovereignty of that island. The successes of the allies soon 
 compelled even Spain to accede to the terms of the Alliance for pre- 
 serving the peace of Europe. 
 
 2. In 1739, however, the general peace was interrupted by a war 
 
 between England and Spain, growing out of the com- 
 BETWEEN mercial and colonial difficulties of the two nations. For 
 ENGLAND a long time Spain, claiming the right of sovereignty over 
 
 the seas adjacent to her American possessions, which had 
 been confirmed by successive treaties, had distressed and insulted 
 the commerce of Great Britain by illegal seizures made under the 
 pretext of the right of search for contraband goods ; while Britain, 
 on the other hand, secretly encouraged a contraband traffic, little to 
 her honor, and deeply injurious to Spain. War was first declared 
 by England : the vessels of each nation in the ports of the other 
 were confiscated ; and powerful armaments were fitted out by the one 
 to seize, and by the other to defend, the Spanish American possess- 
 ions, while pirates from Biscay harassed the home trade of England. 
 
 3. While this war continued with various success, a general Euro- 
 pean war broke out, called the " war of the Austrian succession,'* 
 presenting a scene of the greatest confusion, and eclipsing, by its im
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 419 
 
 p^rtance, the petty conflicts on the American seas. Charles VI., em- 
 peror of Austria, the famous competitor of Philip for the throne of 
 Spain, died in the autumn of 1 740 ; and as he had no male 
 issue he left his dominions to his eldest daughter, Maria " I ' f C p U81i:8 
 Theresa, queen of Hungary, in accordance with a solemn OF THE 
 
 AUSTEIAI * 
 
 ordinance called the Pragmatic Sanction, 1 which had 
 
 . SUCCESSION. 
 
 been confirmed by all the leading States of Europe. This 
 sanction, however, did not secure his daughter, after his death, from 
 the attacks of a host of enemies, who hoped to make good their 
 pretensions, by force of arms, to different portions of her estates. 
 
 4. The elector of Bavaria declared himself, by virtue of his descent 
 from the eldest daughter of Ferdinand I., the proper heir of the 
 hereditary Austrian provinces : the elector of Saxony, who was also 
 Augustus III., king of Poland, made the same claims by virtue of a 
 preceding marriage with the house of Saxony : Spain was anxious 
 to appropriate to herself some of the Italian principalities, and vir- 
 tually laid claim to the whole Austrian succession, while Frederick 
 II., the young king of Prussia, marched suddenly into Silesia, and took 
 possession of that country. France, swayed by hereditary hatred of 
 Austria, sought a dismemberment of that empire ; while England 
 offered her aid to Maria Theresa, the daughter of her ancient ally, 
 to preserve the integrity of the Austrian dominions. 
 
 5. The plan of the coalition against the Austrian queen embraced 
 the elevation of Charles Albert, the electoral prince of 
 Bavaria, to the sovereignty of all the German States ; COALITION 
 and accordingly, in the summer of 1741, two French AGAINST 
 armies crossed the Rhine, and being joined by the Ba- 
 
 varian forces, seized Prague, made several other important conquests, 
 threatened Vienna, and compelled Maria Theresa to flee from her 
 capital. In a diet held at Frankfort,* in Frebruary 1742, the impe- 
 rial crown, through the influence of France and Prussia, was given 
 to Charles Albert. In the meantime Maria Theresa, crushed in 
 
 1. Pragmatic Sanction There are four ordinances with this title mentioned in history : 1st, 
 that of Charles VII. of France, in 1438, on which rest the liberties of the Galilean church : 2d, 
 tbe decree of the German diet in 1439, sanctioning the former: 3d, the ordinance of the German 
 emperor Charles- VI. in 1740, by which he endeavored to secure the succession to his female 
 descendants, and which led to the war of the Austrian succession : and 4th, the ordinance by 
 which Charles III. of Spain, in 1759, ceded the throne of Naples to his third son and his posterity. 
 
 i Frankfort, or Frankfort-on-thc-Mayn, is a celebrated commercial city of Germany, on the 
 north bank of the Mayn, eighteen miles north-east from its confluence with the Rhine at 
 Mayence. There is also a Frankfort-on-tlie-Oder, ninety-five miles north-east ftom Dresden. 
 (Map No. XVII.)
 
 420 MODERN HISTORY. [PART H 
 
 everything but energy of spirit by the vast array against her. pre- 
 sented herself, with her infant son, in the diet of the Hungarian 
 nobles, and having first sworn to protect their independence, de 
 'manded their aid in tones that her beauty and her tears rendered 
 more persuasive. The swords of the Hungarians flashed in the air 
 as their acclamations replied, " We will die for our sovereign Maria 
 Theresa !" On the very day that Charles Albert was crowned at 
 Frankfort, Munich, 1 his own capital, fell into the hands of the Aus- 
 trian general ; and while Bavaria was plundered, the new emperor 
 was compelled to live in retirement far from his own dominions. In 
 
 another quarter fortune was not equally favorable to 
 T VM'>-3 J ^- u3 *' 1 ^ a 5 an d Maria Theresa was compelled to purchase 
 
 peace of the Prussians by the surrender of Silesia. 
 (June 1741.) This loss was compensated, however, by a successful 
 blockade of Prague, then in the hands of the French, who were at 
 length forced to a disastrous retreat, while England began to take a 
 more active part in the war against France. The losses of France were 
 great on the ocean ; and in 1 743 George II. of England, advancing into 
 Germany at the head of a powerful army, defeated the French at Dettin- 
 gen, a and compelled them to retreat across the Rhine. (June 1743.) 
 
 6. The year 1744 is distinguished by the renewal of hostilities on 
 
 the part of Frederick, who. having formed an alliance 
 vi. 1744. . 
 
 with the king of France, entered Bohemia at the head 
 
 of seventy thousand soldiers, and in the beginning of September sat 
 down before Prague, which soon surrendered, and with it a garrison 
 of eighteen thousand men. But misfortunes rapidly succeeded this 
 brilliant beginning of the campaign; the illness of Louis XV., king 
 of France, prevented the promised diversion on the side of the Rhine ; 
 and Frederick was eventually compelled to retreat to his own do- 
 minions, with the loss of twenty thousand men. The king of Prussia 
 acknowledged, in his own memoirs, that no general committed greater 
 faults during the campaign than he did himself: and that the conduct 
 of his opponent, the Austrian general, marshal Traun, was a model 
 of perfection, which every military man would do well to study. 
 
 7. The death of Charles Albert, early in January 1745, removed 
 
 all reasonable grounds for continuing the war ; but the 
 national animosity between England and France prevent- 
 
 1. Munich is a large German city, the capital of Bavaria, on the Isar, a southern branch of 
 the Danube, t\v.-> hundred and twenty miles west from Vicuna. It is called the " Athena of 
 south Germany." (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. DMingen is a smalt Tillage of Bavaria, on the Mayn, sixteen miles south -east ot Frankfort
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 42 
 
 ed the restoration of peace. During the same year, the celebrated 
 French general, marshal Saxe, obtained the victory of Fontenoy 1 over 
 the Austrians, and their Du ,ch and English allies commanded by the 
 duke of Cumberland, and conquered the Austrian Netherlands and 
 Dutch Flanders. The king of Prussia conducted a successful cam- 
 paign in Silesia and Saxony, and in December concluded with Austria 
 the treaty of Dresden, which confirmed him in the possession of Si 
 lesia. In the meantime the German States had elected for their 
 emperor Francis I., the husband of Maria Theresa, and in the treaty 
 of Dresden he was formally acknowledged by Frederick. 
 
 8. In Italy the combined armies of France, Spain, and Naples 
 obtained important advantages over the Austrians and Sardinians 
 and at the close of the campaign they held possession of all Lorn 
 bardy and Piedmont. 2 During the same year, while the king of 
 England was warring with the French in the Netherlands, his own 
 dominions were invaded. The loss of the English at Fon- 
 
 .. , _. , , . VIII. INVA- 
 
 tenoy seemed to present to Charles Edward, grandson SION OF 
 
 of James II., commonly called the Young Pretender, ENGLAND, 
 
 17456 
 a fit opportunity for attempting the restoration of his 
 
 family to the throne of England. Being furnished by the French 
 monarch with a supply of money and arms, at the head of a small 
 force he landed, in July, on the coast of Scotland, and being joined 
 by many of the Highland clans, on the 16th of September he was 
 enabled to fake possession of Edinburgh, 3 and a few days later de- 
 feated the royal forces at Preston Pans. 4 In November he entered 
 
 1. Fontenoy is a village of Belgium, in the province of Hainault (a-no), forty-three miles 
 K>uth-west from Brussels. The battle was fought April 30th, 1745. Voltaire's account of it, in 
 his " Age of Louis XV.," is extremely interesting. (JWap No. XV.) 
 
 2. Piedmont, (pied-de-monte, "foot of the mountain,") the principal province of the Sardinian 
 monarchy, has the Swiss canton of Valais and the Sardinian province of Savoy, on the north, 
 and Savoy and France on the west. Capital, Turin. In 1802 Napoleon incorporated it with 
 France, but it was restored in 1814. 
 
 3. Edinburgh, the metropolis of Scotland, county of Mid Lothian, is two miles south of the 
 Frith of Forth, and three hundred and thirty-seven miles north-west from the city of London. 
 It is principally built on three par;:ilel ridges running east and west. At the western extremity 
 of the central ridge, which is terminated by a precipitous rock four hundred and thirty-four 
 feet above the level of the sea, is the castle ; and a mile distant, at the eastern extremity of the 
 ridge, is the palace of Holyrood, one hundred and eight feet above the same level. The palace 
 has a peculiar interest from the circumstance that the apartments occupied by the unfortunate 
 Queen Mary have been carefully preserved in the state in which she left them. Connected 
 with the palace, on the north, are the ruins of the abbey of Holyrood. Edinburgh is highly 
 eelebraled for its literary and educational institutions. (Map No. XVI.) 
 
 4. Preston Pans is a small seaport town of Scotland, on the south shore of the Frith of Forth, 
 seven and a-half miles east of Edinburgh. It derives its name from its having, for a length 
 *ned period, had a number of salt work ? or pans for the production of salt by tho evaporation 
 of sea-water. (Map No. XVI.)
 
 422 MODERN HISTORY. [?AET IL 
 
 England, and advanced to within a hundred miles of London, but 
 was then compelled to retreat into Scotland, where, after having de- 
 feated the royal forces a second time, his cause was utterly ruined by 
 the decisive battle of Culloden. 1 (April 1746.) To the disgrace of 
 the English, the surrounding country was given up to pillage and de- 
 vastation. After a variety of adventures Charles reached France in 
 safety ; but numbers of his unfortunate adherents perished on the 
 Bcaffold, or by military execution, while multitudes were transported 
 to the American plantations. 
 
 9. During the year 1745 the important French fortress of Louis- 
 
 burg, on the island of Cape Breton, 4 was captured by 
 ,^. f t ne British and their colonial allies, an event which re- 
 
 IN AMhUlCA. 
 
 vived the spirits of the English, and roused France to a 
 great vindictive effort for the recovery of Louisburg, and the devas- 
 tation of the whole American coast from Nova Scotia to Georgia. 
 Accordingly a powerful naval armament was sent out to America H 
 1746 ; but it was so enfeebled by storms and shipwrecks, and dispirit- 
 ed by the loss of its commander, that nothing was accomplished by it. 
 
 10. During the years 1746 and 1747 hostilities were carried on 
 
 with various success by the French and the Spaniards on 
 one side, and the English, Dutch, and Austrians, on the 
 e ther. By sea the French lost almost their last ship ; but no im- 
 portant rtaval battles were fought, as the English navy had scarcely 
 a rival. On the continent, northern Italy and the Netherlands were 
 the chief seats of the war. The French were driven from the former, 
 and the Austiyans and their allies from the latter. 
 
 XI. TREATY 
 
 OF AIX-LA- 1 ranee made frequent overtures of peace, and m Octo- 
 OHAPELLE, b er 1748 the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was concluded 
 between all the belligerents, on the basis of a restitution 
 of all conquests made during the war, and a mutual release of prison- 
 ers without ransom. The treaty left unsettled the conflicting claims 
 
 1. Culloden, or Culloden Moor, is a heath in Scotland, four miles east of Inverness, and one 
 hundred and fifteen miles north-west from Edinburgh. The battle of Culloden, fought April 
 27lh, 1746, terminated the attempts of the Stuart family to recover the throne of England. 
 (Map No. XVI.; 
 
 2. The island of Cape Breton, called by the French Isle Royalt, is on the south-eastern 
 border of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Louisburg; once called the " Gibraltar of America," was 
 a strongly-fortified town, having one of the best harbors in the world. After its capture by 
 general Wolfe in 1~58, (see p. 430,; its wall? were demolished, and the materials of its buildings 
 were carried away for the construction of Halifax, and other towns on the coast. Only a tew 
 fishermen's huts are now found within the environs of the city, and so complete is the ruin 
 I h:it it B with t ifflculty the outlines of the fortifications, and of the principal buildings, can b 
 traced.
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 4i>3 
 
 of the English arid Spaniards to the trade of the American seas ; 
 but France recognized the Hanoverian succession to the English 
 throne, and henceforth abandoned the cause of the Pretender. Neither 
 France nor England obtained any recompense for the enormous ex- 
 penditure of blood and treasure which the war occasioned; but in 
 one aspect the result was favorable to all parties, as, by preserving 
 the .mity of the Austrian dominion, it maintained the due balance 
 of power in continental Europe. 
 
 IV. THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR : 1756-63.* 1. The treaty or 
 Aix-la-Chapelle proved to be little better than a sus- r EIGHT 
 pension of arms. A period of eight years of nominal YEARS OF 
 peace that followed did not produce, in the different rEACK - 
 States of Europe, the desired feeling of united firmness and security ; 
 but all seemed unsettled, and in dread of new commotions. Two 
 causes, of a nature entirely distinct, united to involve all 
 
 * II. CAUSES 
 
 Christendom in a general war. The first was the long OF ANOTHER 
 standing colonial rivalry between France and England ; WAE> 
 and the second, the ambition of the Great Frederick of Prussia, and 
 the jealousy with which the court of Austria regarded the increase 
 of the Prussian monarchy. 
 
 2. Immediately after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, difficulties 
 arose between France and England respecting their colonial possess- 
 ions in India. Several years previous to the breaking out of the 
 European war, the forces of the English and French East India 
 companies, having taken part, as auxiliaries, in the wars between the 
 native princes of the country, had been engaged in a course of hos- 
 tilities at a time when no war existed between the two nations. 
 
 3. More serious causes of quarrel arose in North America. The 
 French possessed Canada and Louisiana, one commanding the mouth 
 of the St. Lawrence, the other that of the Mississippi ; while the in- 
 tervening territory was occupied by the English colonists. The 
 limits of the American colonial possessions of the two nations had 
 been left undefined at the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, and hence dis- 
 putes arose among the colonists, who did not always arrange their 
 controversies by peaceful discussion. The French made settlements 
 at the head of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, claiming the ter- 
 
 a That part of the war waged in America between France and England is better known in 
 American history as th j u French and Indian war." Although hostilities began, in the colonies, 
 in 1754, no forum! declaration of war was made by either France or England until the breaking 
 out ot the general European war in 1756.
 
 424 MODERN HISTORY. [PABT 11 
 
 ritory as a part of New Brunswick; while, by extending a frontier 
 line of posts along the Ohio river, they aimed at confining the 
 British colonies to the Atlantic coast, and cutting 
 NINO OF them off from the rest of the continent. In 1754 the 
 HOSTILITIES English Colonial authorities began hostilities on the 
 Ohio, without waiting for the formality of a declaration 
 of war : in the following year the French forts at the head of the 
 Bay of Fundy were reduced by colonel Monckton ; but the English 
 general, Braddock, who was sent against Fort Du Quesne, on the 
 Ohio, was defeated with a heavy loss, and his army was saved from 
 total destruction only by the courage and conduct of major Wash- 
 ington, who commanded the provincial troops. 
 
 4. These colonial difficulties were the prominent causes of enmity 
 between France and England ; but such were now the bonds of in- 
 terest and alliance that united the different European States, that 
 the quarrel betwixt any two led almost inevitably to a general war. 
 A cause of war entirely distinct from the foregoing was found in the 
 relations existing between Prussia and Austria. Maria Theresa was 
 still dissatisfied with the loss of Silesia, and Frederick, too clear- 
 sighted, not to see that a third struggle with her was inevitable, 
 abandoned the lukewarm aid of France, and formed an alliance with 
 England, (Jan. 1756,) an event which altogether changed the exist- 
 ing relations between the different States of Europe. Prussia was 
 
 ^ thus separated from her old ally France, and England 
 EUROPEAN from Austria, while France and Austria, nations that 
 ALLIANCE, j^ | jeen euem j eg f or three hundred years, found them- 
 selves placed in so close political proximity that an alliance between 
 them became indispensable to the safety of each. Augustus III., 
 king of Poland and also elector of Saxony, allied himself with Aus- 
 tria for the purpose of ruining Prussia ; the empress Elizabeth of 
 .Russia, entertaining a personal hatred of Frederick, who had made 
 her the object of his political satires, joined the coalition against 
 him, while the latter could regard Sweden in no other light than 
 that of an enemy in the event of a general war. 
 
 5. Thus Austria, Russia, France, Sweden, and Poland, had all 
 united against one of the smaller kingdoms, which was deprived of 
 all foreign resources, with the exception of England ; and the latter, 
 in a continental war, could give her ally but little effective aid. 
 Austria looked with confidence upon the recovery of Silesia ; the 
 partition of Prussia was already planned, and the dayi< of the Prus
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 425 
 
 eian monarchy appeared to be already numbered ; but in this most 
 unequal contest the superiority of Frederick as a general, and the 
 discipline of his troops, enabled Prussia to come out of the war with 
 increased power and glory. 
 
 6. Frederick, without waiting for the storm that was about to 
 
 burst upon him, marched forth to meet it, to the surprise 
 
 r i v> FIRST 
 
 of his enemies, who were scarcely aware that he was CAMPAIGN OF 
 
 arming. In the month of August, 1756, he entered FREDERICK, 
 Saxony at the head of seventy thousand men, blockaded 
 tho Saxon army, and cut off its supplies, defeated an army of Aus 
 trians that advanced to the relief of their allies, and finally com- 
 pelled the Saxon forces, now reduced to fourteen thousand men, to 
 surrender themselves prisoners, (Oct. 1756,) many of whom he forced 
 to enter the Prussian service. Thus the result of the first campaign 
 of Frederick was the conquest of all Saxony. 
 
 7. It was not till the month of May and June 1756, that England 
 and France issued their declarations of war against each other, al- 
 though hostilities had for some time previously been carried on be- 
 tween their colonies. France commenced the war by an expedition 
 against the island of Minorca, then in possession of the English ; 
 and that important fortress surrendered, although admiral Byng had 
 been sent out with a squadron for the relief of the place. In 
 America the English had planned, early in the season, the reduction 
 of Crown Point, Niagara, and Fort Du Quesne, but not a single ob- 
 ject of the campaign was either accomplished or attempted. 
 
 8. At the beginning of the campaign of 1757 it was estimated 
 that the armies of the enemies of Frederick, on foot, and 
 preparing to march against him, exceeded seven hundred 
 thousand men, while the force which he and his English allies could 
 bring into the field amounted to but little more than one third of 
 that number. Frederick, having succeeded in deceivir^ the Aus- 
 trians as to his real intentions, began the campaign by invading Bo- 
 hemia, where, at the head of sixty-eight thousand men, he fought and 
 won the celebrated and sanguinary battle of Prague, (May 6,) 
 against an army of seventy-five thousand Austrians. Dearly, how- 
 ever, was the victory purchased, as twelve thousand five hundred 
 Prussians lay dead or wounded on the field of battle. Seeking to 
 follow up his advantage, in the following month Frederick experi- 
 enced a severe check, being defeated by the greatly superior force
 
 426 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET II 
 
 of marshal Daun at Kolin, 1 in consequence of which the Prussians 
 were forced to raise the siege of Prague, and evacuate Bohemia. 
 The Austrians and their allies, after this unexpected victory, resumed 
 operations with increased activity : a Russian army of one hundred 
 and twenty thousand men invaded Prussia on the east ; seventeen 
 thousand Swedes entered Pomerania ; and two powerful French armies 
 crossed the Rhine to attack the English and Hanoverian allies of 
 Prussia commanded by the duke of Cumberland. The latter, being 
 defeated, was compelled to sign a disgraceful convention by which 
 his army of thirty-eight thousand men was reduced to a state of .in- 
 activity. 
 
 9. The loss of his English allies at this juncture was a most griev- 
 ous blow to the king of Prussia. While he held the Austrians at 
 bay in Lusatia, Saxony, whence the Prussians drew their supplies, 
 was opened to the French ; the Russians were advancing from the 
 east, and already the Swedes were near the gates of Berlin,* when 
 the sudden recall of the Russian army, owing to the serious illness 
 of the Russian empress, illumined the troubled path of Frederick 
 with a glimmering of hope, which promised to lead him on to better 
 fortune. After having in vain tried to give battle to the Austrians, 
 he suddenly broke up his camp, and by rapid marches advanced into 
 Saxony, to drive the French out of that country. 
 
 10. Early in November, Frederick, at the head of only twenty 
 thousand men, came up with the enemy, whose united forces amount- 
 ed to seventy thousand. After some manoeuvring he threw' his little 
 army into the low village of Rossback, 8 the heights around which, 
 covered with batteries, served at once to defend his position, and 
 conceal his movements. Here the French and their allies, antici- 
 pating a certain victory, determined to surround him, and thus, by 
 making him prisoner, at once put an end to the war. To accomplish 
 this object they advanced by forced marches, with sound of trumpet ; 
 anxious to we if Frederick would have the courage to make a stand 
 
 1. Kolin is a small town of Bohemia, thirty-seven, miles a little south of east from Prague, 
 The battle of Kolin, fought June 18th, 1757, was the first which Frederick lost in the Seven 
 Years' War. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Berlin, the capital of the Prussian States, and the ordinary residence of the monarch, is 
 OD the rLver Spree, a branch of the Elbe, in the province of Brandenburg, one hundred and 
 sixty miles south-east from Hamburg. Berlin is one of the finest cities in Europe, and is called 
 the Athens of the north of Germany. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. Rossback is r.ear the western bank of the river Saale, in Prussian Saxony, about twenty 
 miles south-west from Leipsic, and consequently near the battle-fields of Leipsic, Jena, ind 
 LuUen. The banks of the Saale are fully immortalized by carnage. (Map No. XVII.)
 
 CHAP. Vj EIGHTEENTH CEXTURY. 427 
 
 against them. The morning of the 5th of November Frederick 
 spent in recoun jitering the enemy, and learned their plans for envel 
 oping him ; but he kept his forces perfectly quiet until the afternoon 
 without allowing a single gun to be fired, when, giving his orders, 
 and suddenly concentrating the greater part of his troops to one 
 point, he hurled them, column after column, in one irresistible tor- 
 rent upon the foe. Never before had the French encountered such 
 rapidity of action : they were completely overwhelmed and routed 
 before they could even form into line ; and in less than half an hour 
 the action was decided. " It was the most inconceivable and com- 
 plete route and discomfiture," says Voltaire, " of which history makes 
 any mention. The defeats of Agincourt, Cressy, and Poitiers, were 
 not so humiliating." 
 
 11. The French fled precipitately from the field of battle, and 
 never stopped until they had reached the middle States of Germany 
 while many only paused when they had placed the Rhine between 
 themselves and the victors. Seven thousand prisoners, and three 
 hundred and twenty officers of every rank, including eleven generals, 
 fell into the hands of the king, while the loss of the Prussians 
 amounted to only five hundred in killed and wounded. Frederick 
 caused the wounded among the prisoners to be treated with tho 
 greatest humanity and attention. The officers of distinction, who 
 Were taken prisoners, he invited to sup with him. He told them he 
 regretted he could not offer them a more splendid entertainment, 
 " but gentlemen," said he, " I did not expect you so soon, nor in so 
 large numbers." 
 
 12. The victory of Rossback had recovered Saxony, and, what 
 was equally important, it gave an opportunity to the English and 
 Hanoverian troops to resume their arms, which they did on the 
 ground of the alleged infraction of the convention by the French 
 general. Still the affairs of Prussia were gloomy in the extreme, 
 for during the absence of Frederick from Silesia, that province had 
 been overrun by the Austrians, and the Prussians had been defeated 
 in several battles. Frederick returned thither in December with 
 thirty thousand men, and on the 5th of that month was met. on the 
 vast plain of Lissa, 1 by the Austrian force of ninety thousand men, 
 
 1. The Lissa here mentioned is a small town of Silesia, fourteen miles west of Bresiau the 
 capital of the province, and about one hundred and seventy-five miles souih-east from Berlin. 
 The battle was fought in the plain between Lissa and Bresiau. There is another and larger 
 town of Lissa, in Posen, fifty-five miles north-west from Bresiau. (Map No. XVII.)
 
 428 MODERN HISTORY. PART IL 
 
 exactly one mouth after the battle of Rossback. Here Frederick 
 had recourse to those means by which he had often been enabled to 
 double his power by the celerity of his manoeuvres. Having succeed- 
 ed in masking the movements of his troops, by taking possession of 
 some heights near the field of battle, and causing a false attack to 
 be made on the Austrian right, he fell suddenly upon their left and 
 routed it before the right could be brought to its support. The con- 
 sequent disorder was communicated to the whole Austrian army, and 
 in the course of three hours Frederick gained a most complete vic- 
 tory. The Austrians lost seven thousand four hundred men in killed 
 and wounded, twenty-one thousand prisoners, and one hundred and 
 seventeen cannon, while the total Prussian loss was less than five 
 thousand men. In this extraordinary battle superior genius tri- 
 umphed over superior numbers. When Frederick was told of the 
 many insulting things that the Austrians had said of him and his 
 little army, " I pardon them readily," said he, " the follies they may 
 have uttered, in consideration of those they have just committed." 
 
 13. The campaign of 1757 was the most eventful of all those 
 waged by Frederick ; but although he had been forced to risk his 
 fate in eight battles, and more than a hundred partial actions, his 
 numerous enemies failed in their object. The battles of Rossback 
 and Lissa inspired the English people with the greatest enthusiasm 
 for the Prussian army, and the result was a fresh subsidiary treaty 
 entered into with Frederick, by which England agreed to furnish him 
 an annual subsidy of six hundred and seventy thousand pounds, and 
 to send an army into Germany. Mr. Pitt, recently appointed prime 
 minister, entered fully into the views of supporting Frederick, de- 
 claring that " the American colonies of the French were to be con- 
 quered through Germany." 
 
 14. The campaign of 1758 was opened by Ferdinand, duke of 
 
 Brunswick, who, by the influence of the king of Prussia, 
 had been appointed commander of the English and 
 Hanoverian troops in Germany. At the head of thirty thousand 
 men he drove a French army of eighty thousand beyond the Rhine, 
 and in a brief campaign of three months, from January to April, 
 took eleven thousand prisoners. Frederick commenced the campaign 
 in March, by reducing the last remaining fortress in Silesia : then 
 he penetrated to Olmutz, 1 in Moravia, but failed in the siege of that 
 
 1. Olmutz, the former capital of Moravia, and one of the strongest fortresses of the Austrian 
 empire, is on the small river March or Morava, one hundred and five miles north-east from
 
 GHAT. V ] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 429 
 
 place. Here the Austrians completely surrounded him in the very 
 heart of their country, but he effected a retreat as honorable as a 
 victory, and suddenly directed his march against the Russians, who 
 were committing the most shocking ravages in the province of Bran- 
 denburg, sparing neither age nor sex. 
 
 15. At the head of thirty thousand men Frederick met the enemy, 
 numbering fifty thousand, on the 24th of August, near the small 
 village of Zorndorf, 1 where one of the most sanguinary battles of the 
 Seven Years' War was fought, continuing from nine o'clock in the 
 morning until ten at night. On the evening of this sanguinary day 
 nineteen thousand Russians and eleven thousand Prussians lay dead and 
 wounded on the field of battle ; but the victory was claimed for the latter. 
 The Prussian king in person led the last attacks, and so much was 
 he exposed to the fire of the Russians that all his aids, and the pages 
 who attended him, were either killed, wounded, or taken prisoners. 
 The able Austrian general, count Daun, who had often fought Fred- 
 erick, and sometimes with success, had written to the general of the 
 Russians, "not to risk a battle with a wily enemy, whose cucing 
 and resources he was not yet acquainted with ;" but as the courier 
 who carried this dispatch fell into the hands of the Prussians, Fred- 
 erick himself answered the letter in the following words : " You 
 had reason to advise the Russian general to be on his guard against 
 a crafty and designing enemy, whom you were better acquainted with 
 than he was ; for he has given battle, and has been beaten." At a 
 later period in this campaign count Daun surprised and routed the 
 right wing of Frederick's troops at Hochkirchen,* in Saxony, when 
 nothing but the admirable perfection of the Prussian discipline saved 
 the army from utter destruction. But this reverse could not damp 
 the spirits of Frederick : he drove the Austrians a second time from 
 Silesia ; and then compelled Daun to abandon the sieges of Dresden 
 and Leipsic, and retreat into Bohemia. At the end of the campaign 
 Frederick found himself in possession of the same countries as in the 
 preceding year, while, in addition, northern and central Germany 
 had been recovered from the French. 
 
 16. In the meantime the war had been carried on in other quarters 
 
 Vienna. It was taken by the Swedes in the thirty years' war, was besieged unsuccessfully by 
 Frederick the Great in 175?, and Lafayette was confined there in 1794. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 1. Zorndorf is a small village of Brandenburg, about twenty miles north-east from Frank- 
 fort on the Oder, and about the same distance south-east from Custrim. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Huchkirchcn is a small village in the present kingdom of Saxony, (formerly in LuaatiaJ 
 Chirty-seven miles east from Dresden. It is a short distance south-east from Bautaen which 
 was the chief town of Upper Lusatia, (May No. XVII.)
 
 430 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II 
 
 between the French and the English. In India the French wero 
 generally successful, as they not only preserved their possessions, but 
 wrested several fortresses from their rivals, but they were deprived 
 of all their settlements on the coast of Africa, while in North 
 America they abandoned Fort du Quesne to the English, and were 
 obliged to surrender the important fortress of Louisburg, after a vig- 
 orous siege conducted by generals Amherst and Wolfe. 
 
 17. The campaign of 1759 commenced under favorable auspices 
 
 for the Prussians, as they succeeded early in the season 
 viir. 1759. . ' * . -n , , 
 
 m destroying the .Russian magazines in Poland, and 
 
 broke up the Austrian armies in Bohemia ; but in August Frederick 
 himself suffered a greater loss, in the battle of Kunersdorf, 1 than 
 any he had yet experienced. At the head of only forty-eight thou- 
 sand men he attacked the combined Russian and Austrian force of 
 ninety-six thousand, defended by strong intrenchments, but he was 
 defeated with the loss of more than eighteen thousand men in killed 
 and wounded. The Russian and Austrian loss was nearly sixteen 
 ihoi^nd ; in allusion to which, the Russian general, writing to the 
 empress an account of the battle, said : " Your majesty must not be 
 surprised at the greatness of our loss. It is the custom of the king 
 of Prussia to sell his defeats very dear." At a later period of the 
 campaign Frederick rashly exposed fourteen thousand of his troops 
 in the defiles of Bohemia, where they were surrounded by the Aus- 
 trians, and, after a valiant resistance, compelled to surrender, when 
 only three thousand of the number remained tinwounded. Yet, after 
 all the reverses which the Prussians sustained, the only permanent 
 acquisition made by the Austrians was Dresden, for Frederick's vigor 
 and rapidity of movement rendered even their victories fruitless. 
 
 18. The campaign of Ferdinand of Brunswick against the French, 
 during this year, was more successful than that of the king of Prussia. 
 On the 1st of August he attacked the French army of seventy thou- 
 sand men near Minden, 4 and obtained a complete victory, which 
 alone prevented the French from gaining possession of the king of 
 England's Hanoverian dominions. On the ocean and in the colonies 
 the results of the year 1759 were highly favorable to the English. 
 The French fleets were destroyed ; the English gained a decided 
 
 1. Kunersdorf \ a small village of the province of Brandenburg, a short distance south of 
 Frankfort-r>n-the-Oder, and on the eastern bank of the river, fifty-five miles south-east from 
 Scrim. The battle fought near this town is sometimes called the battle of Frankfort. 
 
 2. Min len is a Prussian town in Westphalia, on the west bank of the Weser, near Die Haa 
 overian frontier, thirty-flve miles south-west from Hanover. (Map No. J" VII.)
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CEXTURY. 431 
 
 preponderance in India ; while the conquest of Canada was achieved 
 by the gallant Wolfe, who fell in the moment of victory before the 
 walls of Quebec. 
 
 19. After a winter spent in futile attempts at negotiation, the 
 most vigorous preparations were made by all parties for 
 
 the campaign of 1760. It opened with a continuation 
 of misfortunes to Prussia, with the loss of nearly nine thousand men 
 surrounded and taken prisoners by the Austrians, with an unsuc- 
 cessful attempt on Dresden by Frederick himself, and the surrender 
 of an important fortress in Silesia. For the space of a year Fred- 
 erick had met with almost continual reverses, but, still undaunted 
 and undismayed, his transcendent talents never shone to greater ad- 
 vantage than when brought into action by the rigors of fortune. At 
 the very moment when he was surrounded with overwhelming forces 
 of Russians and Austrians, to the number of one hundred and seventy- 
 five thousand men, and his ruin seemed inevitable, his genius saved 
 him, and converted what appeared the certainty of defeat into a series 
 of brilliant victories. While his enemies were preparing to attack 
 him in his camp, he suddenly fell upon one of their divisions at 
 Liegnitz 1 and almost annihilated it before the others were aware that 
 he had changed his position. (Aug. 16th.) In November he at- 
 tacked the intrenched camp of marshal Daun at Torgou, 2 having 
 previously declared to his generals his determination to finish the 
 war by a decided victory, or perish, with his whole army, in the at- 
 tempt. The battle was perhaps the bloodiest fought during the whole 
 war, but the impetuosity of the Prussians was irresistible, and the result 
 recovered to Frederick all Saxony, except Dresden, and compelled the 
 Austrians, Russians, and Swedes, to evacuate the Prussian dominions. 
 
 20. The campaign of Ferdinand of Brunswick against the French 
 in northern and western Germany was marked by a great number 
 of skirmishes which fatigued both parties, and in which towns and 
 villages were taken and retaken ; but when it is considered that the 
 hostile armies numbered nearly two hundred thousand men, we are 
 surprised to find that no memorable events occurred. 
 
 21. During the year 1760 France and Spain formed an intimate 
 alliance, known by the name of the Family Compact, by which the 
 enemy of either was to be considered the enemy of both, and neither was 
 
 1. Liegnitz is a town of Silesia, on the Katsbach, forty-six miles a little north of west froir 
 Breslau. (May No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Tvrgcu is a town of Prussian Saxony, on the wesi bank of the Elbe, sixty-six mil 
 west from Berlin. (.Map Ni>. XVII.)
 
 432 MODERN HISTORY. [PAUT H 
 
 to make peace without consent of the other. This was an unfortunate 
 act for Spain, whose colonies of Cuba 1 and Manilla, 2 with her ships 
 of war and commerce, soon fell into the hands of England. The 
 English were also successful against the French ; and the latter, be- 
 fore the close of the war, were divested of all their possessions of 
 importance in the East Indies, while Belleisle, 8 on the very coast of 
 France, was captured, and in the West Indies, Martinico, Guadn- 
 loupe, 4 and other islands, were added to the list of British conquests. 
 
 22. The campaign of 1761 was carried on languidly by all parties. 
 The king of Prussia, exhausted even by his victories, was forced to 
 
 act on the defensive, while the English government, after 
 the accession of George III. to the throne, (Oct. 1760,) 
 had shown, under the counsels of Lord Bute, an ardent desire for 
 peace, even if it were to be obtained by the sacrifice of the Prussian 
 monarch. An event which happened early in 1 762 greatly improved 
 the aspect of Prussian affairs, and more than compensated Frederick 
 for the growing coldness of England towards him. This was the 
 death of Frederick's implacable enemy, Elizabeth, empress of Russia, 
 and the accession of her nephew, the unfortunate Peter the Third, 
 who was a warm admirer and most sedulous imitator of the king of 
 Prussia. The Russian armies withdrew from their former Austrian 
 allies, and ranged themselves under the Prussian standards : Sweden 
 concluded a peace with Prussia ; and even Austria consented to a 
 cessation of hostilities in Silesia and Sxony. 
 
 23. In November 1763 the preliminary articles of peace were 
 
 signed at Paris between England, France, and Spain, 
 ^F 1763 K wn ^ e Prussia and Austria, deserted by their allies, were 
 
 left to continue the war ; but they also soon agreed to 
 suspend hostilities, and in the month of February 1763 peace was 
 concluded between all the belligerents. France ceded to England, 
 Canada and Cape Breton, while Spain purchased the restoration of 
 the conquests which had been made from her, by the cession of 
 Florida to England, by giving the latter permission to cut logwood 
 
 1. Ctaia, the largest of the West India islands, and the mistress of the Gulf of Mexico, still 
 belongs to Spain. 
 
 2. Manilla, a fortified seaport city of Luzon, one of the Philippine islands, is the capital of 
 the Spanish settlements in the East. 
 
 3. Bellisle is an island west of France, on the coast of Brittany, thirty miles south-weat from 
 Vannes. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 4. Martinique and Guadaloupe belong to the Windward group of the West Indies. Both 
 have frequently changed hands between- the French and the English, but both were restored 
 U> France in 1815. Martinique was the birth-place of the empress Josephine.
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 433 
 
 in the bay of Honduras, 1 and by a renunciation of all claim to the 
 Newfoundland fisheries. But important as these results were to 
 England, they were so much less advantageous than her position 
 might have commanded, that it was said of her, " she made war likt- 
 a lion, and peace like a lamb." Of France it was said by Voltaire, 
 that " by her alliance with Austria she had lost in six years more 
 men and money than all the wars she had ever sustained against that 
 power had cost her." By the terms of the treaty between Prussia 
 and Austria, prisoners were exchanged, and a restitution of all con- 
 quests was made ; but Frederick still held the much-contested Silesia, 
 a small territory, which had cost the contending parties more than a 
 million of men. The glory of the war remained chiefly 
 with Frederick, who, at the head of his veteran phalanx, CHABAOTEE 
 moving among the masses of Austria, France, and Russia, or 
 and confronting all. still preserved, through an unex- 
 ampled series of victories and reverses, the character of Great. No 
 general ever surpassed him in regularity and rapidity of manoeuvres, 
 in well ordered marches, and in the facility of concentrating masses 
 on the weak side of an enemy. " Bonaparte effected wonders with 
 ample means ; but when reduced to play the forlorn game of Fred 
 erick against united Europe, the great French captain fell, the 
 Prussian lived and died a king." 
 
 V. STATE OF EUROPE. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 1. The 
 peace of 1763 gave general tranquillity to Europe, which I GENEEAL 
 continued until the breaking out of the war between PEACE IN 
 England and her American colonies, called the " War of EUBOPE - 
 ihe American Revolution." The result of the " Seven Years' War 
 fas that Prussia and Austria became the principal continental 
 jowers ; France, by her subserviency to Austria, her ancient enemy, 
 iOst the political ascendency which she had previously sustained ; 
 and Britain, although abandoning her influence in the European 
 system, and maintaining intimate relations with Portugal and Hol- 
 land only, had obtained complete maritime supremacy. Frederick 
 of Prussia exerted himself successfully to repair the desolation made 
 In his dominions by the ravages of war ; he gave corn, for planting, 
 to the destitute, procured laborers from other countries, remitted 
 the taxes for a season, and during the four and twenty years of his 
 
 1. Honduras is a settlement adjoining the bay of the same name, on the eastern coast of i 
 'aontan. In 1798 it was transferred to England, in accordance with a previous treaty.
 
 434 MODERN HISTORY. [P^ai II 
 
 reign after the peace, he appropriated for the encouragement of agri- 
 culture, commerce, and manufactures, no less than twenty-four millions 
 of dollars ; and this sum he had saved, by his simple and frugal life, 
 from the amount set apart for the maintenance of his court. 
 
 2. In the meantime France, during the last years of the reign of 
 
 the dissolute Louis XV., was declining in power, and 
 sinking into disgrace. While the finances were in a state 
 of utter confusion, and universal misery pervaded the land, theie 
 was the same splendor in the court, and the same profusion in ex- 
 penditure, that marked the conclusion of the reign of Louis XIV. 
 IJoth monarchs were doomed to see their children perish by an un- 
 accountable decay ; and on the death of Louis XV. in 1 774, it was 
 his youthful grandson, already married to an Austrian princess, who 
 was elevated to the throne. As evidence of the heartlessness that 
 often surrounds a court, it is related that no sooner had Louis XV. 
 breathed his last, than the array of sedulous courtiers deserted the 
 apartments of the deceased monarch, and rushed forth in a tumult- 
 uous crowd to do homage to the rising power of Louis XVI. The 
 first act of this pious prince and of his queen was to fall on their 
 knees and exclaim, " Our God ! guide and protect us : we are too 
 young to reign." 
 
 3. "While the power and greatness of France were declining, 
 
 Russia was gradually acquiring a preponderating influ- 
 
 III. RUSSIA. . _. ,,. T 
 
 ence in Eastern Jiiurope. In 1768 a war broke out be- 
 tween her and Turkey, which resulted in a series of defeats and 
 losses to the latter. During this war Russia had taken possession 
 of Moldavia and "VVallachia, 1 which she was extremely desirous of 
 retaining ; but Austria opposed it, lest Russia should become too 
 powerful ; and as the latter was at die same time engaged in a con- 
 test with a confederacy of Polish patriots under the pretence of at- 
 tempting to restore tranquillity to Poland, it was thought best that 
 she should retain a portion of the Polish territory instead of the 
 conquered Turkish provinces. But even this would destroy the bal- 
 
 ance between the three great eastern powers of Christen- 
 
 IV. DISH EM- r 
 
 BERMEST OF dom ; and, to restore the equilibrium, Prussia and Aus- 
 POLAXD. tl .- a mus t haye a share also ; and thus was accomplished 
 
 1. Moldavia and Wallachia are two contiguous provinces of Turkey, embracing the ancient 
 Dacia. (Map No. IX.) They are in reality under the protection of Russia. Walls cfcia lies 
 along the northern bank of the Danube, and Moldavia immediately west of the rivr Prnth. 
 (Map No. XVU i
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 435 
 
 the iniquitous measure of a dismemberment of Poland, and the di- 
 vision of a large portion of her territory between Russia, Prussia, 
 and Austria. (1773.) 
 
 4. At the time of the conclusion of the peace of 1 763 a strong feel- 
 ing of animosity existed between the two great parties in y STATE OF 
 England, the whigs and the tories, the latter of whom PARTIES IN 
 had been taken into favor and rewarded with the chief ENGLAXD - 
 offices of government soon after the accession of George the Third. 
 A long and expensive war had increased the national debt, and ren- 
 dered additional taxes necessary, while the bulk of the nation very 
 naturally thinking that conquests and riches ought to go hand in 
 hand, were induced to believe that administration arbitrary and op- 
 pressive which loaded them with new taxes immediately after the 
 great successes which had attended Jie British arms. The indiscre- 
 tion of the ministry, in levying the taxes upon certain important ar- 
 ticles of domestic manufacture, threw the kingdom into an almost 
 universal ferment, and compelled the resignation of the earl of Bute, 
 who was at the head of the tory administration. 
 
 5. The earl of Bute was succeeded by Mr. Grenville, and as he also 
 was a tory, and was considered but the passive instrument of the late 
 minister, he inherited all the unpopularity of his predecessor. One 
 of his first acts was the arrest and prosecution of Mr. Wilkes, a 
 member of parliament, who, in a paper called the North Briton, had 
 asserted that the king's speech at the opening of parliament, which 
 he affected to consider as the minister's, contained a falsehood. On 
 a hearing before the judges of the common pleas, it was decided 
 that the commitment of Mr. Wilkes was illegal, and that his privi 
 leges, as member of parliament, had been infringed by the ministry. 
 Mr. Wilkes was subsequently outlawed by the Commons, on his fail 
 ing to appear to answer the charges against him ; but this extreme 
 severity only increased the agitation, and imbittered the feelings of 
 the opposing parties. At a later period, on a legal trial, the out- 
 lawry of Mr. Wilkes was reversed, and he was repeatedly chosen a 
 member of the Commons, although the house as often rejected him. 
 
 6. The augmentation of the revenue being at this time the chief 
 object of the administration, in 1764 Mr. Grenville in- 
 troduced into parliament a project for taxing the Ameri- 
 
 3an colonies; and early in 1675 the " Stamp Act" was 
 passed an act ordering that all legal writings, together with pam- 
 phlets, newspapers. &c., in the colonies, should be executed on
 
 436 MODr.RS HISTORY. [PART 1L 
 
 stamped paper, for which a duty should be paid to the crown. The 
 colonies resisted every project for taxing them, on the ground that 
 they were not represented in the British parliament, and that 
 taxation and representation were inseparable ; and a large party in 
 England, consisting mostly of whigs, united with them in maintain- 
 ing this doctrine. The stamp act was soon repealed, but the minis- 
 try still avowed the right of the mother country to tax her colonial 
 possessions, and this doctrine, still persisted in, laid the foundation 
 for that contest which at length terminated in the independence of 
 the American colonies. 
 
 7. Misfortunes seemed to attend almost every scheme undertaken 
 by England for coercing the Americans into obedience. A bill was 
 passed for depriving the people of New England of the benefits of 
 the Newfoundland fisheries ; and it was thought that this act would 
 throw into the hands of British merchants the profits which were 
 formerly divided with the colonies ; but the Americans refused to 
 supply the British fishermen with provisions, and many of the ships 
 were obliged to abandon, for a time, the business on which they 
 came, and return in quest of supplies. Added to this, a most vio- 
 lent and unprecedented storm swept over the fishing banks ; the sea 
 arose thirty feet above its ordinary level, and upwards of seven hun- 
 dred English fishing boats were lost, with all the people in them, 
 and many ships foundered with their whole crews. When, at the 
 commencement of the war, an immense quantity of provisions was 
 prepared in England for the use of the British army in America, the 
 transports remained for a long time wind-bound ; then contrary winds 
 detained them so long near the English coasts that nearly twenty 
 thousand head of live stock perished ; a storm afterwards drove 
 many of the ships to the West Indies, and others were captured by 
 American privateers, so that only a few reached the harbor of Boston, 
 with their cargoes greatly damaged. The universal distress produced 
 throughout the British nation by the refusal of the Americans to 
 purchase British goods, completed the catalogue of evils which fol- 
 lowed in the train of ministerial measures, and, by exciting the most 
 violent altercations between opposing parties, seemed to threaten 
 England herself with the horrors of civil war. 
 
 8. Passing by the arguments that were used for and against tax- 
 ation the acts exhibiting the rash confidence and perseverance of 
 the ministers and the crown the determined opposition of the colo- 
 nies the changes in the English ministry, and the dissensions be-
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CEXTURY 437 
 
 tween opposing parties in England we come to the decisive open- 
 ing of the war with the British American colonies by the 
 
 VII. OPENING 
 
 skirmish at Lexington, on the 19th of April, 1775. A OF THE WAa 
 revolutionary war of seven years' duration followed, WITH THE 
 
 -1 f j.1. 1 i iU COLONIES. 
 
 on the American soil, a war of the weak against the 
 strong of the few in numbers against the many but a war successful, 
 in its results, to the cause of. freedom. Fortunately for the colonies 
 the war was not confined to them alone ; and as the history of the 
 American portion of it is doubtless already familiar to most of our 
 readers, we proceed to consider the new relations, between England 
 and the other powers of Europe, arising out of the war of the Ameri- 
 can Revolution. 
 
 9 The continental powers, jealous of the maritime and commercial 
 prosperity of England, and ardently desiring her humili- 
 ation in the contest which she had unwisely provoked PKAN KKL A 
 with her colonies, rejoiced at every misfortune that befel TIONS OF 
 her. The French and Spanish courts, from the first, 
 gave the Americans the aid of their sympathy, and opened their 
 ports freely to American cruisers, who found there ready purchasers 
 for their prizes ; and although, when England complained of the aid 
 thus given to her enemies, it was publicly disavowed, yet it was evi- 
 dent that both France and Spain secretly favored the cause of the 
 Americans. 
 
 10. The capture of the entire British army of general Burgoyne 
 at Saratoga, in October 1777, induced France to throw 
 
 aside the mask with which she had hitherto endeavored 
 to conceal her intentions ; and in the month of March FRANCE AND 
 1778, she gave a formal notification to the British gov- * iJlra 
 ernment that she had concluded a treaty of alliance, 
 friendship, and commerce, with the American States. France and 
 England now made the most vigorous preparations for the anticipated 
 contest between them ; the English marine force was increased, but 
 the French navy now equalled, if it did not exceed, that of England, 
 nor was France disposed to keep it idle in her ports. 
 
 11. Although war had not yet been declared between the two na- 
 tions, in the month of April, 1778, a French fleet, com- 
 manded by Count D'Estaing, sailed from Toulon for BETWEEN 
 America : and soon after a much larger naval force was FRANCE AND 
 
 . , , 11. / T ENGLAND. 
 
 assembled at Brest, with the avowed object 01 invading 
 
 England. In June, the English admiral Keppel fell in with and at-
 
 438 MODERN HISTORY. (.PART IL 
 
 tacked threu French frigates on the western coast of France, two of 
 which he captured. The French government then ordered reprisals 
 against the ships of Great Britain, and the English went through the 
 same formalities, so that both nations were now in a state of actual war. 
 
 12. During the autumn and winter of 1778 the West Indies were 
 the principal theatre of the naval operations of France and England. 
 In September, the governor of the French island of Martinique at- 
 tacked, and easily reduced, the English island of Dominica, 1 where 
 he obtained a large quantity of military stores ; but in the December 
 following the French island of St. Lucia 2 was compelled to submit 
 to the English admiral Barrington, after an ineffectual attempt to 
 relieve it by the fleet of D'Estaing. 
 
 13. While these naval events were occurring on the American 
 coasts, the French and English settlements in the East Indies had 
 also become involved in hostilities. Soon after the acknowledgment 
 of American independence by the court of France, the British East 
 India company, convinced that a quarrel would now ensue between 
 the two kingdoms, despatched orders to its officers at Madras to 
 attack the neighboring post of Pondicherry, the capital of the French 
 East India possessions. That place was accordingly besieged in 
 August, by a force of ten thousand men, natives and Englishmen, 
 and after a vigorous resistance was compelled to surrender in Octo- 
 ber following. Other losses in that quarter of the globe followed, 
 and during one campaign the French power in India was nearly anni- 
 hilated. 
 
 14. In the year 1779 another power was added to the enemies of 
 England. Spain, under the pretext that her mediation, (which she 
 
 had proposed merely as the forerunner of a rupture) 
 BETWEEN had been slighted by England, declared war, and with 
 SPAIN AND the cooperation of a French fleet laid siege to Gib- 
 raltar, both by sea and land, in the hope of recovering 
 that important fortress. Early in this year a French fleet attacked 
 and captured the British forts and settlements on the rivers Senegal 
 and Gambia, on the western coast of Africa ; and later in the season 
 the French conquered the English islands of St. Vincents 3 and 
 
 1. Dominica is one of the Windward islands, in the West Indies, between Martinique and 
 the ( iuadaloupe. It was restored to England at the peace of 1783. 
 
 2. St. Lucia is also one of the Windward group. At the peace of Paris it was deflnitivelj 
 assigned to England. 
 
 3. St. rincents is the central island of the Windward group. By the peace of 1783 it reverted 
 to Great Britain.
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CETTURY. 439 
 
 Grenada 1 in the West Indies ; but the count D'Estaing acting in 
 concert with an American force, was repulsed in the siege of Savannah. 
 
 15. Early in January 1780, the British admiral Rodney being 
 despatched with a powerful fleet to the relief of Gibraltar, fell in 
 with and captured a Spanish squadron of seven ships of war and a 
 number of transports ; and a few days later he engaged a larger 
 squadron off Cape St. Vincent, and captured six of the heaviest ves- 
 sels and dispersed the remainder. These victories enabled him to 
 afford complete relief to the garrisons of Gibraltar and Minorca, 
 after which he proceeded to America, and thrice encountered the 
 French fleet, but without obtaining any decisive success. In August 
 the English suffered a very heavy loss in the capture of the outward 
 bourd East and West India fleets of merchant vessels, by the Span- 
 iards, off the western coast of France. 
 
 16. The position which England had taken in claiming the right 
 of searching neutral ships for contraband goods, together with her 
 
 occasional seizure of vessels not laden with exceptionable 
 
 . . xii. ARMED 
 
 cargoes, were the cause of a formidable opposition to her NEUTRALITY 
 
 at this time, by most of the European powers, who united AGAINST 
 in forming what was called the " Armed Neutrality" 
 for the protection of the commerce of neutral nations. In these pro- 
 ceedings, Catherine, Empress of Russia, took the lead, asserting, in her 
 manifesto to the courts of London, Versailles, and Madrid, that she 
 had adopted the following principles, which she would defend and 
 maintain with all her naval power: 1st, that neutral ships should 
 enjoy a free navigation from one port to another, even upon the 
 coasts of belligerent powers, except to ports actually blockaded : 2d, 
 that all effects conveyed by such ships, excepting only warlike stores, 
 should be free : 3d, that whenever any vessel should have shown, by 
 its papers, that it was not the carrier of any contraband article, it 
 should not be liable to seizure or detention; and 4th it was de- 
 clared that such ports only should be deemed blockaded, before which 
 there should be stationed a sufficient force to render the entrance 
 perilous. Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Prussia, Portugal, and Ger 
 many, readily acceded to the terms of the "armed neutrality;" 
 France and Spain expressed their approval of them, while nothing 
 but fear of the consequences which must have resulted from the re 
 
 1. Grenada is one of the most southerly of the Windward group. About the year 1650 it 
 was first coloured by the French, from whom it was taken by the British in 176-2. In 1779 it 
 was retaken by the French, but was restored to Great Britain at the peace of 1783.
 
 440 MODERN HISTORY. [PAST II 
 
 fusal, induced England to submit to tins exposition of the laws of 
 nations, and the rights of neutral powers. 
 
 17. Since the alliance between France and the United States, 
 
 mutual recriminations had been almost constantly pass- 
 XIH. RUFTUEE b e t ween the English and the Dutch government, the 
 
 BETWEEN / 
 
 ENGLAND former accusing the latter of supplying the enemies of 
 AND England with naval and military stores, contrary to 
 treaty stipulations, and the latter complaining that great 
 numbers of Dutch vessels, not laden with contraband goods, had been 
 seized and carried into the ports of England. A partial collision 
 between a Dutch and 'an English fleet, early in the year 1780, had 
 increased the hostile feelings of the two nations ; and in December 
 of the same year Great Britain declared, and immediately com- 
 menced, war against Holland, induced by the discovery that a com- 
 mercial treaty was already in process of negotiation between that 
 country and the United States. The Dutch shipping was detained 
 in the ports of Great Britain, and instructions were despatched to 
 the commanders of the British forces in the West Indies, to pro- 
 ceed to immediate hostilities against the Dutch settlements in that 
 quarter. 
 
 18. The most important of these was the island of St. Eustatia," 
 a free port, abounding with riches, owing to the vast conflux of trade 
 from every other island in those seas. The inhabitants of the island 
 were wholly unaware of the danger to which they were exposed, 
 when, on the 3d of February, 1781, Admiral Rodney suddenly ap- 
 peared, and sent a peremptory order to the governor to surrender 
 the island and its dependencies within an hour. Utterly incapable 
 of making any defence, the island was surrendered without any stipu- 
 lations. The amount of property that thereby fell into the hands 
 of the captors was estimated at four millions sterling. The settle- 
 ments of the Dutch situated on the north-eastern coast of South 
 America soon after shared the same fate as Eustatia. 
 
 19. In the month of May the Spanish governor of Louisiana 
 completed the conquest of West Florida from the English, by the 
 capture of Pensacola. In the West Indies the fleets of France and 
 England had several partial engagements during the month of April, 
 May, and June, but without any decisive results. In the latter part 
 
 1. St. Eustatia is one of the group of the Leeward islands, a range extending north-west of 
 the Windward isles. This island was taken possession of by the Dutch early in the seventeenth 
 century. It has, since then, several times changed ham's between them, the French, and the 
 English, but was finally given up to Holland in 1814.
 
 CHAPV.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 441 
 
 of May a large l>ody of French troops landed on the island of To- 
 bago, 1 which surrendered to them on the 3d of June. In the month 
 of August a severe engagement took place on the Dogger Bank, 1 
 north of Holland, between a British fleet, commanded by Admiral 
 Parker, and a Dutch squadron, commanded by Admiral Zoutman. 
 Both fleets were rendered nearly unmanageable, and with difficulty 
 regained their respective coasts. 
 
 20. In the meantime the war had been carried on, during a period 
 of more than six years, between England and her rebellious Ameri- 
 can colonies ; but the latter, guided by the counsels of the immortal 
 Washington, had nobly withstood all the efforts of the most powerful 
 nation in the world to reduce them to submission, and had finally 
 compelled the surrender, at Yorktown, of the finest army England 
 had ever sent to America. After the defeat and surrender of Corn- 
 wallis, at Yorktown, in October, 1781, the war with the United States 
 was considered, virtually, at an end ; but between England and her Eu- 
 ropean enemies hostilities were carried on more vigorously than ever. 
 The siege of Gibraltar was ardently prosecuted by the Spaniards ; 
 and the soldiers of the garrison, commanded by governor Elliot, were 
 greatly incommoded by the want of fuel and provisions. They were 
 also exposed to an almost incessant cannonade from the Spanish bat- 
 teries, .situated on the peninsula which connects the fortress with the 
 main land. During three weeks, in the month of May, 1781, nearly 
 one hundred thousand shot or shells were thrdira into the town. But 
 while the eyes of Europe were turned, in suspense, upon this im- 
 portant fortress, and all regarded a much longer defence impossible, 
 suddenly, on the night of the 27th of November, a chosen body of 
 two- thousand men from the garrison sallied forth, and, in less than 
 an hour, stormed and utterly demolished the enemy's works. The 
 damage done on this occasion was estimated at two millions sterling. 
 
 21. In the month of February following, the island of Minorca, 
 after a long siege, almost as memorable as that of Gibraltar, sur- 
 rendered to the Spanish forces, after having been in the possession 
 of England since the year 1708. During the same month the former 
 Dutch settlements on the north-eastern coast of South America were 
 
 1. Tobago is a short distance north-east of Trinidad, near the northern coast of South 
 America. It was ceded to Great Britain by France in 1763, but in 1781 was retaken by the 
 ^Vench, who retained possession of it till 1793, since which it has belonged to England. 
 
 2. The Dogger Bank is a long narrow sand bank in the North Sea or German Ocean, extend- 
 ing from Jutland, on the west coast of Denmark, nearly to the mouth of the Humber, on the 
 eastern coast of England. 
 
 U*
 
 442 MODERN HISTORY. [Pxat IL 
 
 recaptured by tlie French. St. Eustatia had been recaptured in the 
 preceding November. Other islands in the West Indies surrendered 
 to the French, and the loss of the Bahamas 1 soon followed. For these 
 losses, however, the British were fully compensated by an important 
 naval victory gained by Admiral Rodney over the fleet of the Count 
 de Grasse, on the 12th of April, in the vicinity of the Carribee 
 islands." In this obstinate engagement most of the ships of the 
 French fleet were captured, that of Count de Grasse among the 
 number, and the loss of the French, in killed, wounded, and prisoners, 
 was estimated at eleven thousand men. The loss of the English, in- 
 cluding both killed and* wounded, amounted to about eleven hundred. 
 
 22. During the year 1 782 the fortress of Gibraltar, which had so 
 long bid defiance to the power of Spain, withstood one of the most 
 memorable sieges ever known. The Spaniards had constructed a 
 number of immense floating batteries in the bay of Gibraltar ; and 
 one thousand two hundred pieces of heavy ordnance had been brought 
 to the spot, to be employed in the various modes of assault. Besides 
 these floating batteries, there were eighty large boats, mounted with 
 heavy guns and mortars, together with a vast multitude of frigates, 
 sloops, and schooners, while the combined fleets of France and Spain, 
 numbering fifty sail of the line, were to cover and support the attack. 
 Eighty thousand barrels of gunpowder were provided for the occasion, 
 and more than one hundred thousand men were employed, by land 
 and sea, against the fortress. 
 
 23. Early in the morning of the 13th of September the floating 
 batteries came forward, and at ten o'clock took their stations about 
 a thousand yards distant from the rock of Gibraltar, and began a 
 heavy cannonade, which was seconded by all the cannon and mor- 
 tars in the Spanish lines and approaches. At the same time thf 
 garrison opened all their batteries, both with hot and cold shot, and 
 during several hours a tremendous cannonade and bombardment was 
 kept up on both sides, without the least intermission. About two 
 o'clock the largest Spanish floating battery was discovered to emit 
 smoke, and towards midnight it was plainly seen to be on fire. Other 
 batteries began to kindle ; signals of distress were made ; and boats 
 
 1. The Bahamas are an extensive group of islands lying east and south-east from Florida. 
 They have been estimated at about six hundred in number, most of them were cliffs and 
 rocks, only fourteen of them being of any considerable size. 
 
 2. What are sometimes called the Carribee Islands comprisJUhe whole of the Windwwd 
 and the southern portion of the Leeward islands, from Anguiut on the north to Trinidad OB 
 the south.
 
 CHAP.V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 443 
 
 were sent to take the men from the burning vessels, but they were 
 interrupted by the English gun boats, which now advanced to the 
 attack, and, raking the whole line of batteries with their fire, com- 
 pleted the confusion. The batteries were soon abandoned to the 
 flames, or to the mercy of the English. 
 
 24. At the awful spectacle of several hundred of their fellow 
 soldiers- exposed to almost inevitable destruction, the Spaniards ceased 
 firing, when the British seamen, with characteristic humanity, rushed 
 forward, and exerted themselves to the utmost to save those who were 
 perishing in the flames and the waters. About four hundred Span- 
 iards were thus saved, but all the floating batteries were consumed, 
 and the combined French and Spanish forces were left incapable of 
 making any farther effectual attack. Soon after, Gibraltar was re- 
 lieved with supplies of provisions, military stores, and additional 
 troops, by a squadron sent from England, when the farther siege of 
 the place was abandoned. 
 
 25. The siege of Gibraltar was the last act of importance during 
 the continuance of the war in Europe. In the East xjy WA 
 Indies the British settlements had been engaged, during THE EAST 
 several years, in hostilities with the native inhabitants, INDIES. 
 who were conducted by the famous Hyder Ali, and his son Tippoo 
 Saib, often assisted by the fleets and land forces of France and Hol- 
 land. Hyder Ali, from the rank of a common sepoy, had raised 
 himself, by his abilities, to the throne of Mysore, 1 one of the most 
 important of the kingdoms of Hindostan. His territories, of which 
 Seringapatanr 1 was the capital, bordered on those of the English, which 
 lined the eastern coast of the peninsula ; and as he saw the possess- 
 ions of the Europeans gradually encroaching upon the domains of 
 the native princes, he resolved to unite the latter in a powerful con 
 federacy for the expulsion of the intruders. After detaching one of 
 the powerful northern princes from an alliance with the English, and 
 
 1. Mysore, a town of southern Hindostan, and capital of the State of the same name, is three 
 hundred miles north of Cape Comorin, and nine miles south- west from Seringapatam. The 
 State of Mysore, comprising a territory of about thirty thousand square miles, is almost entirely 
 surrounded by the territory of the Madras presidency ; and although the government is nomi- 
 nally in the hands of a native prince, it is subsidiary to the government of Madras. From 
 1760 to 1799 Mysore was governed by Hyder Ali and Tippoo Saib. 
 
 2. Seringapatam is a decayed town and fortress of Hindostan, in the State of Mysore, two 
 hundred and fifty miles south of Madras. It was besieged by the Engl ah on three different 
 occasions : the first two sieges took place in 1791 and 1792, and the third in 1799, on the 4th of 
 May of which year it was stormed by the British and their allies, on which occasion Tippoo 
 was killed, with the greater part of his garrison, amounting to eight thousand men. On an 
 eminence in the suburbs of Seringapatam ia the mausoleum of Hyder Ali z.nd Tippoo Saib.
 
 444 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 having introduced the European discipline among his numerous troops, 
 as early as 1 767 he began the war, which was continued with scarcely 
 any intermission, but with little permanent success on the part of the 
 natives, down to the period of the American war, when the French 
 united with him, and the war was carried on with increased vigor. 
 
 26. In the year 1780 Hyder Ali and his son Tippoo Saib, at tho 
 head of an army of one hundred thousand natives, and aided by a 
 body of French troops, fell upon the English forces in the presidency 
 of Madras, and killed or captured the whole of them, Madras, the 
 capital, alone being saved from falling into their hands. In the 
 following year the English were strongly reenforced, and Hyder Ali, 
 at the head of two hundred thousand men, was defeated in three 
 obstinate battles ; but these successes were ^ ^rrupted by the loss 
 of an English force of three thousand men, which was entirely cut 
 to pieces by Tippoo Saib in the year 1782. 
 
 27. On the death of Hyder Ali, in the same year, Tippoo Saib 
 succeeded to the throne, and in the following year, after the restora- 
 tion of peace between France and England, he concluded a treaty 
 with the English, in which the latter made concessions that greatly 
 detracted from the respeet hitherto paid to their name in Asia. But 
 this native prince never ceased, for a moment, to cherish the hope of 
 expelling the British from Hindostan. In 1790 he began the war 
 again, but was eventually compelled to purchase peace at the price 
 of one half of his dominions. His last war with the English ter- 
 minated in 1799, by the storming of Seringapatam, his capital, and 
 the death of Tippoo, who fell in the assault. 
 
 28. On the 30th of November 1782, preliminary articles of peace 
 
 were signed between Great Britain and the United States, 
 
 xv ' 
 
 g which were to be definitive as soon as a treaty between 
 France and Great Britain should be concluded. When 
 the session of parliament opened, on the 5th of December, consid- 
 erable altercation took place in respect to the terms of the provis- 
 ional treaty, but a large majority was found to be in favor of the 
 peace thus obtained. The independence of the United States being 
 now recognized by England, the original purpose of France was ac- 
 complished ; and all the powers at war being exceedingly desirous of 
 xvi GENE- P eace > preliminary articles were signed by Great Britain, 
 BAL TREATY France, and Spain, on the 20th of January, 1783. By 
 OF 1783. t ki g treaty France restored to Great Britain all French 
 acquisitions in the West Indies during the war; excepting Tobago,
 
 CHAP. V.] 'EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 445 
 
 ^hile England surrendered to France the important station of St. 
 Lucia. On tint coast of Africa the settlements in the vicinity of the 
 river Senegal were ceded to France, those on the Gambia to Eng- 
 land. In the East Indies France recovered all the places she had 
 lost during the war, to which were added others of considerable im- 
 portance. Spain retained Minorca and "West Florida, while East 
 Florida was ceded to her in return for the Bahamas. It was not till 
 September, 1783, that Holland came to a preliminary settlement 
 with Great Britain, although a suspension of arms had taken place 
 between the two powers in the January preceding. 
 
 29. Thus closed the most important war in which England had 
 ever been engaged, a war which originated in her ungenerous treat- 
 ment of the American colonies. The expense of blood and treasure 
 which this war cost England was enormous ; nor did her European 
 antagonists suffer much less severely. The United States was the 
 only country that could claim any beneficial results from the war, 
 and these were obtained by a strange union of opposing motives and 
 principles on the part of European powers. France and Spain, ar- 
 bitrary despots of the Old World, had stood forth as the protectors 
 of an infant republic, and had combined, contrary to all the princi- 
 ples of their political faith, to establish the rising liberties of America, 
 They seemed but as blind instruments in the hands of Providence, 
 employed to aid in the dissemina-tion of those republican virtues that 
 are destined to overthrow every system of political oppression through- 
 out the world. 
 
 VI. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 1. The democratic spirit which 
 had called forth the war between England and her American colonies, 
 and which the princes of continental Europe had en- 
 couraged and fostered, through jealousy of the power of DEMOCRATIC 
 England, to the final result of American independence, SPIRIT - 
 was destined to exert a much wider influence than the royal allies of 
 the infant Republic had ever dreamed of. Borne back to France by 
 those of her chivalrous sons who, in aiding an oppressed people, had 
 imbibed their principles, it entered into the causes which were al- 
 ready at work there in breaking up the foundations of the rotten 
 frame-work of French society, and contributed greatly to hurry for- 
 ward the tremendous crisis of the French Revolution. 
 
 2. At the time of the death of Louis XV., in 1774, the lower 
 ord jrs of the French people had been brought to a state of extreme
 
 446 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET H 
 
 indigence and suffering, by the luxuries of a dissolute and despotic 
 court, during a long period of misrule, in which agriculture was sadly 
 neglected, and trade, commerce, and manufactures, existed but in an 
 infant and undeveloped state. The nobility had been, for a long 
 period, losing their power and their wealth, by the gradual elevation 
 of the middling classes ; and the clergy had lost much of their influ- 
 ence by the rise of philosophical investigation, which was not only 
 attended by an extraordinary degree of freedom of thought, but was 
 strongly tinctured also with infidelity. 
 
 3. Louis XVI., who came to the throne at the age of twenty years, 
 
 was poorly calculated to administer the government at a 
 LOUIS xvi critic^ P er iod, when resolute and energetic measures 
 
 were requisite. He was a pious prince, and sincerely 
 loved the welfare of his subjects ; but the exclusively religious educa- 
 tion which he had received had made him little acquainted with the 
 world, and he was exceedingly ignorant of all polite learning even of 
 history and the science of government. Ignorance of politics, weak- 
 ness, vacillation, and irresolution, were the fatal defects in the king's 
 character. 
 
 4. To find a remedy for the disordered state of the French finances, 
 m FINAN- an< ^ *ke Decline f public credit, was the first difficulty 
 CIAL DIFFI- which Louis had to encounter ; nor did he surmount it 
 
 CULTIES. un til he found himself involved in the vortex of a Revo- 
 ution. Minister after minister attempted it, sometimes with partial 
 success, but oftener with an increase of evil. Turgot would have 
 introduced radical and wise reforms by an equality of taxation, and 
 by the suppression of every species of exclusive privilege ; but the 
 nobility, the courtiers, and the clergy, who were interested in main- 
 taining all kinds of abuses, protested against any sacrifices on their 
 part ; and the able minister fell before their combined opposition. 
 Turgot was succeeded by Neckar, a native of Geneva, an economical 
 financier, who had amassed immense wealth as a banker ; but his 
 projects of economy and reform alarmed the privileged orders, and 
 their opposition soon compelled him to retire also. 
 
 5. The brilliant, vain, and plausible Calonne, the next minister of 
 finance, promulgated the theory that profusion forms the wealth of 
 a State ; a paradox that w.as highly applauded by the courtiers. 
 His system was to encourage industry by expenditure, and to stifle 
 discontent by prodigality ; he liquidated old debts by contracting 
 new ones, paid exorbitant pensions, and gave splendid entertain-
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 447 
 
 mcnts ; and while the credit of the minister lasted, hia resources 
 appeared inexhaustible. Calonne continued the system of loans after 
 the conclusion of the American war, and until the credit of the gov- 
 ernment was utterly exhausted, when it was found that the annual 
 deficit of the revenue, below the expenditure, was nearly thirty mil- 
 lions of dollars ! General taxation of the nobility and clergy, as 
 well as the commons, was now proposed, and in order to obtain a 
 sanction to the measure, an assembly of the Notables, the chiefs 
 of the privileged orders, was called ; but although the assembly at 
 first assented to a general tax, the national parliament defeated the 
 project. 
 
 6. Brienne, who succeeded Calonne, becoming involved in a contest 
 with the parliament, which was anxious to maintain the THE 
 immunities of the privileged orders, and being unable to STATES- 
 obtain a loan to meet the exigencies of government, was 
 
 reduced to the necessity of a convocation of the States-General, a 
 great National Legislature, composed of representatives chosen from 
 the three orders, the nobility, the clergy, and the people, but which 
 had not been assembled during a period of nearly two hundred years. 
 
 7. When the day came for the payment of the dividends to the 
 public creditors, the treasury was destitute of funds ; much distress 
 was occasioned, and an insurrection was feared ; but the removal of 
 Brienne, and the restoration of Neckar to office, created confidence, 
 while the most urgent difficulties were removed by temporary expe- 
 dients, in anticipation of some great change that was to follow the 
 meeting of the States-General, the remedy that was now universally 
 called for. The court had at first dreaded the convocation of the 
 States-General, but finding itself involved in a contest with the priv- 
 ileged classes, who assumed all legal and judicial authority, it took 
 the bold resolution of throwing itself upon the representatives of the 
 whole people, in the hope that the commons would defend the throne 
 against the nobility and clergy, as they had done, in former times, 
 against the feudal aristocracy. 
 
 8. When it was known that the great assembly of the nation was 
 to be convened, a universal ferment seized the public mind. Social 
 reforms, extending to a complete reorganization of society, became 
 the order of the day ; political pamphlets inundated the country ; 
 politics were discussed in every society ; theories accumulated upon 
 theories ; and, in the ardor with which they were combated and de- 
 fended, were already to be seen the seeds o c those dissensions which
 
 448 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET 1L 
 
 afterwards deluged the country with blood. There was abundance 
 of evil to be complained of, and it was evident ^hat exclusive privi- 
 leges, and the marked division of classes, must be broken down. The 
 clergy held one-third of the lands of the kingdom, the nobility an- 
 other third ; yet the remaining third was burdened with all the ex- 
 penses of government. This was more than could be borne ; yet the 
 clergy, the nobility, and the magistracy, obstinately refused the sur- 
 render of their exclusive privileges, while, on the other hand, the 
 philosophic party, considering the federal republic of America as a 
 model of government, desired to break up the entire frame-work of 
 French society, and construct the edifice anew. Such was the state 
 of France when the assembly of the States-General was called, a 
 measure that was, in itself, a revolution, as it virtually gave back the 
 powers of government to the people. The Third-Estate the Com- 
 mons, comprising nearly the whole nation, demanded that its represent- 
 atives should equal those of the other two classes the clergy and the 
 nobility. Public opinion called for the concession, and obtained it. The 
 result of the elections conformed to the sentiments of the three classes 
 in the kingdom : the nobility chose those who were firmly attached to 
 the interests and privileges of their order ; the bishops, or clergy, 
 chose those who would uphold the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and 
 who were more inclined to political freedom than the former ; while 
 the commons, or Third-Estate, chose a numerous body of represent- 
 atives, firm in their attachment to liberty, and ardently desirous of 
 extending the power and influence of the people. 
 
 9. At the opening of the States-General, on the 4th of May, 1789, 
 a difficulty arose as to the manner in which the three orders should 
 vote ; the clergy and nobility insisting that there should be three 
 assemblies, each possessing a veto on the acts of the others, while the 
 commons insisted that all should be united in one general assembly, 
 without any distinction of orders. The commons managed with 
 t p*eat tact and adroitness, waiting patiently, day after day, fo* the 
 clergy and nobility to join them, but after more than a month had 
 thus passed away, they declared themselves the " National Assembly," 
 being, as they asserted, the representatives of ninety-six hundredths, 
 at least, of the nation, and therefore the true interpreters of the 
 national will. The nobles, alarmed by this sudden boldness of the 
 Assembly, implored the monarch to support their rights ; a coalition 
 was formed between them and the court, but the public mind was 
 against them, and towards the last of June, the clergy and the no-
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 449 
 
 bility, constrained by an order of the sovereign himself, took theii 
 Beats in the hall of the Assembly, where they were soon lost in an 
 overwhelming majority. "The family was united, but it ga^e few 
 hopes of domestic union or tranquillity." 
 
 10. The triumph of the third estate had destroyed the moral power 
 and influence of the government : a spirit of insubordination began 
 to appear in Paris, caused, in some degree, by the pressure of fam- 
 ine; journals and clubs multiplied; declaimers harangued in every 
 street, and directed the popular indignation against the 
 
 king and his family ; and the very rabble imbibed the TIONAEY 
 intoxicating spirit of politics. When a regiment of STATE OF 
 French troops mutinied, and their leaders were thrown 
 into prison, a mob of six thousand men liberated them ; collisions 
 took place between the populace and the royal guards ; and the 
 former, obtaining a supply of muskets and artillery, attacked the Bas- 
 tile, or state prison of Paris, tore the governor in pieces, and inhu- 
 manly massacred the guards who had attempted to defend the place 
 (July 14th, 1789.) 
 
 11. Louis, greatly alarmed, now abandoned the counsels of the 
 party of the nobles, who had advised him to suppress the threatened 
 revolution at the head of his army, and hurrying to the National 
 Assembly, craved its support and interference to restore order to the 
 capital. At the same time he caused the regular troops to be with- 
 drawn from Paris, while the defence of the place was intrusted to a 
 body of civic militia, called the National Guards, and placed under 
 the command of La Fayette, whose liberal sentiments, and generous 
 devotion to the cause of American liberty, had made him the idol of 
 tho populace. 
 
 1 2. The union between the king and the National Assembly was 
 hailed with transports of joy by the Parisians, and for a few days it 
 seemed that the revolution had closed its list of horrors ; but there 
 were agents at work who excited and bribed the people to fresh sedi- 
 tion. The consequences of the insurrection of the 14th July extend- 
 ed throughout France ; the peasantry of the provinces, imitating the 
 lower orders of the capital in a crusade against the privileged classes, 
 everywhere possessed themselves of arms ; the regiments of the line 
 declared for the popular side ; many of the chateaux of the nobles 
 were burned, and their possessors massacred or expelled, and in a 
 fortnight there was no authority in France but what emanated from 
 the people. These things produced their effect upon the National 
 
 29
 
 450 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET IL 
 
 Asscmb y. Th i deputies of the privileged classes, seeing no escape 
 from ruin but in the abandonment of those immunities 
 
 VI* (R 1C AT 
 
 POLITICAL which had rendered them odious, consented to sacrifice 
 
 CHANGES. |. ne W i 10 } e j th e clergy followed the example, and in one 
 
 evening's session the aristocracy and the church descended to the 
 
 level of the peasantry ; the privileged classes were swept away, and 
 
 the political condition of France was changed. (Aug. 4th, 1789.) 
 
 13. An interval of two months now passed over without any 
 flagrant scene of popular violence, the Assembly being engaged at 
 Versailles in fixing the basis of a national constitution, and the mu- 
 nicipality of Paris in procuring bread for the lower orders of the 
 Parisians, while the latter, imagining that the Revolution was to 
 liberate them from almost every- species of restraint, were rioting in 
 
 the exercise of their newly-acquired freedom. Towards 
 K the latter part of August the famine had become so 
 
 severe in Paris, (a natural consequence of the public 
 convulsions, and the suspension of credit,) that mobs were frequent 
 in the streets, and the baker's shops were surrounded by multitudes 
 clamoring for food, while the most extravagant reports were circu- 
 lated, charging the scarcity upon the court and the aristocrats. The 
 leaders of the populace, artfully fomenting the discontent, instigated 
 the mob to demand that the king and the Assembly should be re- 
 moved from Versailles to the capital ; and on the 5th of October a 
 crowd of the lowest rabble, armed with pikes, forks, and clubs, and 
 accompanied by some of the national guards, marched to Versailles. 
 They penetrated into the Assembly, vociferously demanding bread, 
 a slight collision occurred between them and some of the king's body 
 guards, and during the ensuing night they broke into the palace, 
 massacred the guards who opposed them, and had it not been for the 
 opportune arrival of La Fayette and his grenadiers, the king him- 
 self and the whole royal family would have fallen victims. After 
 ^tranquillity had been partially restored, the king was compelled to 
 set cut for Paris, accompanied by the tumultuous rabble which had 
 sought his life. The National Assembly voted to transfer its sittings 
 to the capital. The royal family, on reaching Paris, repaired to the 
 Tuilleries, which henceforth became their palace and their prison. 
 
 14. Several months of comparative tranquillity followed this out- 
 rage, during which time the formation of the constitution was prose- 
 cuted with activity by the Assembly. The feudal system, feudal 
 services, and all titles of honor, had been abolished. One general
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 451 
 
 
 
 legislative Assembly had been decreed : the absolute veto of the 
 king had been taken away ; and now the immense prop- ym w 
 erty of the church was appropriated to the State, a meas- CONSTITU- 
 ure that secured the great financial resources which so 
 long upheld the Revolution. In the meantime the training, dividing, 
 forming, and marshalling of parties went on. At first, La i , MARSHAL . 
 Fayette. and those who aided him the moderate friends LING OF 
 of liberty prevailed in the Assembly, satisfied with PIETIES. 
 constitutional reforms, without desiring to overthrow the monarchy 
 But there was another class the ultra revolutionists composed 
 of the factious spirits of the Assembly, who afterwards obtained the 
 control of that body. Having organized themselves into a club, called 
 the club of the Jacobins, from the name of the convent in which 
 they assembled, and gathering members from all classes of society, 
 they held nightly sittings, where, surrounded by a crowd of the popu- 
 lace, they canvassed the acts of the Assembly and formed public opinion. 
 
 15. At one time this club contained more than two thousand five 
 hundred members, and corresponded with more than four hundred 
 affiliated societies throughout France. It was the hot-bed of sedition, 
 and the centralization of anarchy, and it eventually overturned the 
 government, and sent forth the sanguinary despots who established 
 the Reign of Terror. Barnave, the Lameths, Danton, Marat, and 
 Robespierre, were the leaders of the Jacobin faction. Mirabeau, 
 the first master-spirit which arose amid the troubles of the times, a 
 man of extraordinary eloquence and talent, but of loose principles - 
 who had at first united with the Jacobins, foreseeing the sanguinary 
 excess that already began to tinge the career of the Revolution, at 
 length entered into a treaty with the court to use his great influence 
 in aiding to establish monarchy on a constitutional basis ; but his 
 death, early in 1791, up to which period he had maintained his 
 ascendancy in the Assembly, deprived the king of his only hope of 
 being able to withstand the Jacobin influence in the National Legis- 
 lature. Mirabeau had a clear presentiment of the coming disasters. 
 " Soon," said he, " neither the king nor the Assembly will rule the 
 country, but a vile faction will overspread it with horrors,'' 
 
 16. While the machinations of the Jacobins were convulsing 
 France, the repose of Europe was threatened by the in- 
 judicious movements of the emigrant nobility, large EMIGRANT 
 numbers of whom, estimated at seventy thousand, dis- '"UTT. 
 gusted with the Revolution, had abandoned their country, resolved to
 
 ROYAL 
 
 452 MODERN HISTORY. [PAST II. 
 
 seek the restoration of the old go7 eminent by the intervention of 
 foreign powers. Collecting first at Turin, and afterwards at Co- 
 blentz, 1 they endeavored to stir up rebellion in the provinces, and 
 solicited Louis to sanction their plans, and join their 
 me ditated armaments. Louis, accompanied by his queen 
 OF THE and children, attempted to escape secretly to the frontiers, 
 j^ was stopped and brought back a prisoner to his 
 capital. (June 1791.) The Jacobins now argued that 
 the king's flight was abdication ; and the National Assembly, to ap- 
 pease the popular outcry, provisionally suspended him from his 
 functions, until the constitution, now nearly completed, was presented 
 to him for acceptance. On the 14th of September, 1791, he took 
 the oath to maintain it against civil discord and foreign aggression, 
 and to enforce its execution to the utmost of his power. The Con- 
 stituent Assembly, as that which framed the constitution is often 
 called, after having passed a self-denying ordinance that none of its 
 members should be elected to the next Assembly, declared itself dis 
 solved on the 30th of September, 1791. 
 
 17. But the constitution, thus established, could not be permanent, 
 for the minds of the French people were still agitated by the passion 
 for change, and the members of the new Legislative Assembly soon 
 displayed opinions more radical, and divisions more numerous, than 
 their predecessors. The court and the nobility had exercised no in- 
 fluence in the late elections ; the upholders of even a mitigated aris- 
 tocracy had disappeared ; the assembly was thoroughly democratic ; 
 and the only question that seemed to remain for it was the main- 
 tenance or the overthrow of the constitutional throne. The chief 
 parties in the assembly, at its opening, were the constitutionalists and 
 the republicans, the latter were more usually called Girondists, as 
 their most celebrated leaders, Brissot, Petion, and Condorcet, were 
 members from the department of the Gironde. The constitutional- 
 ists would have preserved the throne, while they stripped it of its 
 power ; but the Girondists, enthusiastic admirers of the Americans, 
 despising the vain shadow of royalty, longed for republican institu- 
 tions on the model of antiquity. The Jacobins, who were anarchists, 
 men without principles, and attached to no particular form of gov 
 
 1. Coblenti, (the Confluences of the Romans,) is a Prussian town in the province of the Rhine, 
 at the confluence of the Rhine and Moselle. Since the w.irs of Napoleon it has been strongly 
 fortified, and is now deemed one of the principal bu warfc t of Germany on the side of Franc. 
 (Map No. XVIJ.j
 
 CHAP. V,] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 453 
 
 ernmen t, possessed at first little influence in the assembly, but direct- 
 ing the passions of the populace, and possessing the means of rousing 
 at pleasure the strength of the capital, they soon acquired a prepon- 
 derating influence that bore down all opposition, and crushed the more 
 moderate revolutionary party of the Girondists. 
 
 1 8. The legislative assembly commenced its sittings by confiscating 
 the property of the emigrants, and denouncing the penalties of treason 
 against those refractory priests who refused to take the oath to sup- 
 port the constitution ; but the king refused to sanction the decrees. 
 It was the great object of the Girondists to involve the kingdom in 
 foreign war; and the warlike preparations of the Austrian emperor 
 and the German princes, evidently designed to support the emigrants, 
 rendered it an easy matter to carry out their designs. When an 
 open declaration of his objects was demanded of the Austrian em- 
 peror, he required as a condition on which he would discontinue his 
 preparations, that France should return to the form and principles 
 of government which existed at the time of the commencement of 
 the constituent assembly. Against his own judgment the king yield' 
 ed to the force of public opinion, and on the 20th of 
 
 XII "WAR 
 
 April, 1792, war was declared against the court of DECLARED 
 Vienna. It must be admitted that the war which arose AGAINST 
 from so feeble beginnings, but which at length involved 
 the world in its conflagration, was not provoked by France, but by 
 the foreign powers which unjustly interposed to regulate the laws, 
 and government of the French people. 
 
 19. While the strife of parties continued in Paris, producing con 
 fusion in the councils of the assembly, and increasing anxiety and 
 alarm in the mind of the king, a formidable force was assembling on 
 the German frontier with the avowed object of putting down the 
 Revolution, and restoring to the king the rights of which he had 
 been deprived. The king of Prussia and the emperor of Austria 
 engaged to cooperate for this purpose ; and their united forces were 
 placed under the command of the Duke of Brunswick, who, towards 
 the end of July, entered the French territories at the head of a hun- 
 dred and forty thousand men. The threatening manifesto which he 
 issued roused at once the spirit of resistance throughout every part 
 of France ; the demagogues seized the occasion to direct the popular 
 fury against the court, which was accused of leaguing with the enemy ; 
 and the two prominent factions, the Girondists and Jacobins^ com-
 
 454 MODERN HISTORY. [PxEr II 
 
 bined to overturn the monarchy, each with thi view of advancing its 
 own separate ambitious designs. 
 
 20. The dethronement of the king was now vehemently discussed 
 in all the popular assemblies ; preparations were made in Paris for 
 a general revolt ; and soon after midnight on the morning of the 10th 
 
 of August, an infuriate mob attacked and pillaged the 
 
 MASSACRE P a ^ ace > massacred the Swiss guards, and forced the 
 
 OF THE king and royal family to seek shelter in the hall of 
 
 TENTH OF t j ie Rational Assembly. The assembly protected the 
 
 person of the king, but, yielding to the demands y bf the 
 
 conquering populace, passed a decree suspending the royal functions, 
 
 dismissed the ministers, and directed the immediate convocation of a 
 
 National Convention. La Fayette, then in command of the arjy 
 
 on the eastern frontier, having in vain endeavored to keep his troops 
 
 firm in their allegiance, and being outlawed by the assembly, fled 
 
 into the Netherlands, but was seized and imprisoned by the Aus- 
 
 trians. Dumouriez, who had adhered to the assembly, succeeded to 
 
 the command, and made energetic preparations to resist the coming 
 
 invasion. 
 
 21. The massacre of the 10th of August was soon followed by 
 xiv MASSA- ano * ner f s *i^ more frightful atrocity. The prisons of 
 
 CRE OF Paris had become filled with suspected persons ; and the 
 SEPTEMBER. } ea( j ers O f tf ie Jacobins, now occupying the chief places 
 in the magistracy, in order to diminish the number of their internal 
 enemies planned the massacre of the prisoners. Accordingly, at 
 three o'clock on the morning of the 2d of September, a band of 
 three hundred hired assassins, accompanied by a frantic mob, entered 
 the prisons, and began the work of death. In the court yard of the 
 first prison four and twenty priests were hewn in pieces because they 
 refused to take the revolutionary oath. In some instances the 
 assassins, stained with gore, established tribunals to try their victims, 
 and a few minutes, often a few seconds, disposed of the fate of each 
 individual. The massacres continued from the 2d to the 6th of 
 September, and during this period more than five thousand persons 
 perished in the different prisons of Paris. A committe of the mu- 
 nicipality of Paris, declaring that a plot had been, formed by the pris- 
 oners throughout France to murder all the patriots of the empire, in- 
 vited the other cities to .imitate the massacres of the capital, but, 
 fortunately, none obeyed the summons. 
 
 22. While these shocking excesses were perpetrated in the capital,
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 455 
 
 the armies of Prussia and Austria, which had invaded the French 
 territories; met with a signal repulse. Dumouriez, pursuing his suc- 
 cesses, crossed the Belgian frontier, and on the 6th of November 
 gained the battle of Jemappes, 1 which gave him possession of all the 
 Austrian Netherlands. With so much rapidity and decision did 
 Dumouriez execute the skilful movements of the army, that the allies 
 poon found there was no want of able generals among the French. 
 At the battle of Jemappes, the enthusiasm and martial spirit of the 
 French, displaying themselves in all their brilliancy, bore down all 
 obstacles, and redoubt after redoubt was stormed and taken, to the 
 chant of the Marseilles Hymn. a 
 
 23. The National Convention, which had succeeded the Legislative 
 Assembly, inflamed by this first great victory of the Revolution, pub- 
 lished a decree offering the alliance of the French to every nation 
 that desired to recover its liberties, a decree which was equivalent 
 to a declaration of war against all the monarchies of Europe. One step 
 further was necessary to complete the Revolution, and 
 
 XV TRIAL 
 
 that was the death of the kind-hearted and unfortunate AND EXECU . 
 monarch. On the ridiculous charge of having engaged TJ ON OF 
 in a conspiracy for the subversion of freedom, on the 
 26th of December Louis XVI. was brought before the Convention, 
 and, after a trial which lasted twenty days, was declared guilty, and 
 condemned to death by a majority of twenty-six votes out of seven 
 hundred and twenty-one. Nearly all of those who had voted for his 
 death subsequently perished on the scaffold, during the sanguinary 
 " reign of Terror," which soon followed. On the 21st of January, 
 1793, Louis was led out to execution. He met death with magna- 
 nimity and firmness, amid the insults of his cruel executioners. His 
 fate will be commiserated, and his murderers execrated, so long as 
 justice or mercy shall prevail on the earth. 
 
 1. Jemappes (zhem-map) ia a small village of Belgium, near Mons, forty-four miles south, 
 west from Brussels. The Duke de Chartres, afterwards Louis Philippe king of the French, 
 acted as the lieutenant of Dumouriez during the battle of Jemappes, and by his intrepidity at 
 the head of a column aided essentially in whining the day. 
 
 a. The famous Marseilles ffymn, the national song of the French patriots and warriors, was 
 composed by Joseph Rouget de 1'Isle, (roozh.1 de leel,) a young engineer officer, early in the 
 French Revolution. It was at first called the " Offering to Liberty," but received its present 
 Eaine because it was first publicly sung by the Marseilles confederates in 179-2. Both the words 
 and the music are peculiarly inspiriting. So great was the influence of this song 'ver the ex- 
 citable French, that it was suppressed under the empire and the Bourbons ; but thf Revolution 
 of 1830 called it up anew, and it has since become again the national song of iue French 
 people.
 
 456 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 24. The Girondists, who had been the first to fan the flame of 
 
 revolution, were the first to suffer by its violence.* Ardent 
 
 xvi. FALL republicans in principle, but humane and benevolent in 
 
 or THE their sentiments, they had not desired the death of the 
 
 king, but they could not restrain the mad fury of the 
 Jacobins. The latter, a base faction in the convention, taunted the 
 former with having endeavored to save the tyrant : their partisans, 
 throughout Paris, roused the feelings of the populace against the 
 Girondists: a powerful insurrection a deprived the convention of its 
 liberty : thirty of the leading members of the Girondist party were 
 given up and imprisoned ; and those who had not the fortune to es- 
 cape from Paris were brought to trial, condemned, without being 
 heard in their defence, and speedily executed, 15 and all for no other 
 crime than having tried to prevent the execution of the king, to 
 avenge the massacres of September, and to allay the desolating storm 
 of violence and crime that was spreading terror and dismay over 
 their country. 
 
 25. After the fall of the Girondists, the victorious Jacobins, at 
 the head of whom were Danton, Marat, Robespierre, and their asso 
 ciates, obtained control of the " Committee of Public Safety," a for- 
 midable Revolutionary tribunal, in which was vested the whole power 
 of the convention and of the government. Some opposition was 
 indeed made, by the magistracies of the cities and towns throughout 
 a great part of France, to this central power, and at one time seventy 
 departments were in a state of insurrection against the convention ; 
 but the vigorous measures of the Parisian Revolutionists soon broke 
 this formidable league. Revolutionary committees, radiating from 
 the central Jacobin power in Paris, extended their network over tho 
 whole kingdom ; and these committees, having the power of arrest- 
 ing the obnoxious and the suspected, and numbering more than five 
 hundred thousand individuals, often drawn from the very dregs of 
 society, held the fortunes and lives of every man in France at their 
 disposal. 
 
 26. The prisons throughout France were speedily filled with vie- 
 xvii THK ^ ras ' f rcec l l ans were exacted with rigor ; TERROR was 
 REIGN OF made the order of the day ; and the guillotine* was put 
 
 TERROR. - n re q U i s ition to do its work of death. The queen was 
 
 * Guillotine so called f-om the name of the inventor is an engine or machine for b 
 eadiDg persons at a stroke, 
 a. May Jlst. b. Oct. 31st.
 
 CHAP. V.J EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 457 
 
 brought to the scaffold, a and the dauphin, thrown into prison, ere 
 long fell a victim to the barbarous neglect of las keepers. Irreligion 
 and impiety raised the.r heads above the mass of pollution and crime : 
 the Sabbath was abolished by law : the sepulchres of the xvm xal _ 
 kings of France were ordered to be destroyed, that every UMPH OF 
 memorial of royalty might be blotted out ; and the J 
 leaders of the municipality of Paris, in the madness of atheism, pub- 
 licly expressed their determination " to dethrone the king of Heaven 
 as well as the monarchs of the earth." As the crowning act of this 
 drama of wickedness, the Goddess of Reason, personified by a beauti- 
 ful female, was introduced into the convention, and declared to be 
 the only divinity worthy of adoration : the churches were closed 
 religion everywhere abandoned and on all the public cemeteries was 
 placed the inscription, " Death is an Eternal Sleep." 
 
 27. After the downfall of the Girondists and the party attached to 
 a constitutional monarchy, divisions arose among the Jacobin leaders. 
 The sanguinary Marat had already fallen by the dagger of the devoted 
 heroine, Charlotte Corday, who voluntarily sacrificed her XIX FALL 
 own life in the hope of saving her country. The more OF THE 
 moderate portion of the Revolutionary leaders, Danton, D 
 Camille Desmoulins, and their supporters, who had so recently roused 
 the populace against the Giroude, were ere long charged with show- 
 ing too much clemency, and brought to the scaffold. b The Repub- 
 lican Girondists had sought to prevent the Reign of Terror the 
 Dautonists to arrest it ; and both perished in the attempt. There- 
 after there seemed not a hope left for France. The revolutionary 
 excesses everywhere increased : those who kept aloof from them were 
 suspected, and condemned ; and the power of DEATH was relentlessly 
 wielded by such a combination of monsters of wickedness as the 
 world had never before seen. . 
 
 28. Having pursued the internal history of the Revolution down 
 to the fall of the Dantonists in March 1794, we resume the narra- 
 tive of affairs at the beginning of 1793. The death of ^ WAR 
 Louis XVI., which derives its chief importance from AGAINST 
 the principle which the revolutionists thereby proclaimed, EULOPE - 
 excited profound terror in France, and feelings of astonishment and 
 indignation throughout Europe. France thereby placed herself in 
 avowed and unrelenting hostility to the established governments of the 
 neighboring States; and it was universally felt that the period had 
 
 a. Oct. IGth, 1793. b. March 5th, 1794,
 
 458 MODERN HISTORY. [PAST 1L 
 
 now arrived when she must conquer the coalition of thrones, or perish 
 under its blows. The convention did not wait to be attacked, but 
 forthwith, on various pretexts, declared war against England, Spain, 
 and Holland, and ordered the increase of the armies of the republic 
 to more than five hundred thousand men. 
 
 29. Early in 1 793 the English and Prussians combined to check 
 the progress of the French in Holland, and on the 18th of March 
 Dumouriez was defeated in the battle of Neerwinde. Soon after 
 this repulse, the French general, disgusted with the excesses of the 
 revolutionists in Paris, and finding himself suspected by both Giron- 
 dists and Jacobins, entered into a negotiation with the allied generals 
 for a coalition of forces to aid in the establishment of a constitutional 
 monarchy in France ; but his army did not share his feelings, and 
 being denounced by the convention, and a price set upon his head, 
 he was obliged to take refuge in the Austrian lines. 
 
 30. After the defection of Dumouriez, Custine was appointed to 
 the command of the north, then severely pressed by the allies near 
 Valenciennes ; but being unable to check the progress of the enemy, 
 he was deprived of his command, ordered to Paris, and, soon after, 
 condemned and executed on the charge of misconduct. The revolu- 
 tionary government, seeing no merit but in success, placed its gen- 
 erals in the alternative of victory or death, and employed the terrors 
 of the guillotine as an incentive to patriotism. The fall of Valen- 
 ciennes seemed to open to the allies a way to Paris, but, pursuing in- 
 dependent plans of aggrandizement, they injudiciously divided their 
 forces, and before the close of the year, were driven back across the 
 frontier. 
 
 31. Early in the same year Spain had despatched an army of fifty- 
 five thousand men for the invasion of France by the way of the 
 Pyrenees ; but although the French, who advanced to meet them, 
 were driven back, the campaign in that quarter was characterized by 
 no event of importance. In the meantime, in the west of France, 
 the insurrectionary war of La Vendee was occupying the troops of 
 the convention ; and on the side of Italy the allies were ai red by 
 the revolt of Marseilles, Lyons, and Toulon. 
 
 32. In La Vendee, a large district bordered on the north by the 
 xxi IN u I J ^ re ) an d on tne west by the ocean, containing eight 
 aEorioN OF hundred thousand souls, the Royalists, embracing nearly 
 LA VENDEE. ^ ent j re population, had early taken up arms in the 
 
 cause of their church and their king. This district soon became the
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 459 
 
 theatre of innumerable conflicts, in which the undisciplined peasantry 
 of La Vendee at first had the advantage, from their peculiar mode 
 of fighting, and the nature of their country On the lOth of June, 
 1 793, they obtained a great victory at Saum ir, 1 where their trophies 
 amounted to eighty pieces of cannon, ten thousand muskets, and 
 eleven thousand prisoners ; but on the 29th of the same month they 
 were defeated in their attempt on Nantes, where their brave leader 
 Cathelineau was mortally wounded. During the summer two inva- 
 sions of the country of the Vendeans was made by large bodies of 
 the republican troops under skilful generals, who were defeated and 
 driven back with severe loss. The convention, at length aroused to a 
 full sense of the danger of this war, surrounded La Vendee with an army 
 of two hundred thousand men, who, by a simultaneous advance, threat- 
 ened a speedy extinction of the revolt. But the republican troops 
 who had penetrated the country were cut off in detail the veterans 
 of Kleber were defeated near Torfou," and before the close of Sep- 
 tember the Vendean territory was freed from its invaders. 
 
 33. Again the convention made the most vigorous efforts to sup- 
 press the insurrection. Their forces penetrated the country in every 
 direction, and, with unrelenting and uncalled-for cruelty, burned the 
 towns and villages that fell into their hands, and put the inhabitants, 
 of every age and sex, to the sword. Defeated a in the battle of 
 Cholet,' and their country in the possession of their enemies, a 
 large portion of the surviving Vendeans, with their wives and chil- 
 dren, crossed the Loire into Brittany, with the hope of obtaining 
 assistance from their countrymen in that quarter. In the battle of 
 Chateau Gronthier, 4 fighting with the courage of despair, they gained 
 a decisive victory over the Republican forces, whose loss amounted to 
 twelve thousand men and nineteen pieces of cannon. This victory 
 was gained on the very day when the orator Barrere announced in 
 the convention, " the war is ended, and La Vendee is no more." 
 Great then was the consternation in Paris when it was known that 
 the Republican army was dispersed, and that nothing remained to 
 prevent the advance of the Royalists to the capital. 
 
 1. Saumur is on the southern bank of the Loire, in the former province of Anjou, one hucdrea 
 and fifty-seven miles south-west from Paris. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. Torfou was a small village in the northern part of La Vendee, a short distance BCUth-et*! 
 from Nantes. (Map N>. XIII.) 
 
 3. Cholet (sho-li) is nearly forty miles south-east froni Nantes. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 4. Chateau Gonthier is sixty miles north-east from Nantes. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 a Oct. 17th, 1793.
 
 460 MODERN HISTORY. [PABT II 
 
 34. But the Vendeans were divided in their councils. Induced by 
 the hope of succors from England, they directed their march to the 
 coast, and, after laying siege to Granvillc, 1 where they expected the 
 cooperation of the English, were at length compelled to retreat, with 
 heavy loss. Defeated a at Mans,* an 1 having experienced a final 
 overthrow 1 * at Saveuay, 3 they slowly melted away in the midst of their 
 enemies, fighting with unyielding courage to the last. Out of nearly 
 a hundred thousand who had crossed the Loire, scarcely three thou- 
 sand returned to La Vendee, and most of these fell by the hands of 
 their pursuers, or, brought to a hasty trial, perished on the scaffold. 
 
 35. The discontents in the south of France against the measures 
 
 of the convention first broke out in open insurrection at 
 EECTION IN Marseilles, which was soon reduced to submission, while 
 THE SOUTH a large proportion of the inhabitants fled to Toulon. In 
 
 the meantime Lyons had revolted. During four months 
 it was in a state of vigorous siege ; and sixty thousand men were 
 employed before the place at the time of its surrender in October, 
 1793. All the houses of the wealthy were demolished, and nearly 
 the entire city destroyed. In the course of five months after the 
 surrender of the place, more than six thousand of the citizens suffered 
 death by the hands of the executioners, and more than twelve thou- 
 sand were driven into exile. 
 
 36. On the fall of Lyons the Republican troops immediately 
 marched to the investment of Toulon, whose defence was assisted by 
 an English and Spanish squadron. The artillery of the besiegers 
 was commanded by a young Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte, who re- 
 mained faithful to France, in which he had been educated. By his 
 
 1. Granville is a fortified seaport town of France, on the western coast of Normandy, one 
 hundred and eighty miles west from Paris. Granville was bombarded and burned by the Eng- 
 lish in 1695, and was partly destroyed by the Vendean troops in 1793. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. Mans is situated on the left bank of the river Sarthe, a northern tributary of the Loire, 
 one hundred and twenty miles south-west from Paris. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 3. Savenay is a town on the northern bank of the Loire, twenty-two miles north-west from 
 Nantes. Here the Vendeans fought with the courage of despair, and their guard, protecting a 
 crowd of hapless fugitives the aged, the wounded, women and children continued to resist, 
 with their swords and bayonets, long after all their ammunition had been expended, and until 
 they all fell under the fire of the Republicans. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 a. Dee. 10th, 1793. b. Dec. 22d, 1793. 
 
 c. The most prominent of the Vendean leaders were Larochejacquelin, Bonchamps, Ca^he- 
 lineau, Lescure, D'Elbe, Stofflet, and Charette. Nearly all of these, and most of their families, 
 perished in this sanguinary strife, or on the scaffold. Among those who were saved by the 
 eourageous hospitality of the peasantry \vere the wives of Li'.rochejacquelin and Bonchampe, 
 who, after escapiog unparalleled dangers, lived to fascinate the world by Ihe splendid stcry ol 
 their l.usbands' vjtues and their own misfortunes.
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 461 
 
 exertions a fort commanding the harbor was taken, and the place, 
 being thuj rendered untenable, was speedily evacuated a by the allies, 
 who carried away with them more than fourteen thousand of tht 
 wretched inhabitants being so many saved from the vengeance of 
 the Revolutionary tribunals. 
 
 37. Thus terminated the memorable campaign of 1793. In the 
 midst of internal dissensions and civil war, while France was drenched 
 M'ith the blood of her own citizens, and the world stood aghast at the 
 atrocities of her " Reign of Terror," the national councils had shown 
 uncommon military talent and unbounded energy. The invasion, on 
 the north, had been defeated ; the Prussians had been driven back 
 from the Rhine ; the Spaniards had recrossed the Pyrenees ; the 
 English had retired from Toulon ; and the revolt of La Vendee had 
 been extinguished ; whilt an enthusiastic army, of more than a mil- 
 lion of men, stood ready to enforce and defend the principles of tho 
 Revolution against all the crowned heads of Europe. 
 
 [1794.] 38. The fall of Danton and his associates, which occurred 
 in the early part of 1794, b was followed by unqualified submission 
 to the central power of Paris, from every part of France. For a 
 time the work of proscription had been confined to the higher orders; 
 but when it had descended to the middling classes, and when, even 
 after all the enemies of the Revolution had been cut off, there seemed 
 no limit to its onward course, humanity began to revolt at the cease- 
 less effusion of human blood, and courage arose out of despair. 
 
 39. In the convention itself, which, long stupefied by terror, had 
 become the passive instrument of Robespierre and his 
 associates, a conspiracy against the tyrant was at length OF KOBES- 
 formed among those whose destruction he had already PIERttE > AND 
 
 J END OF THE 
 
 planned, not of the good against the bad, but a con- REIGN or 
 spiracy of one set of assassins against another : his ar- TERROR. 
 rest was ordered : he was declared out of the pale of the law ; and, 
 after a brief struggle, he was condemned, with twenty of his associates, 
 by the same Revolutionary Tribunal which he himself had estab- 
 lished, and sent to the scaffold, where he perished amid the exulting 
 shouts of the populace. On the following day sixty of the most ob- 
 noxious "members of the municipality of Paris met the same fate. 
 Thus terminated that Reign of Terror, which, under the cloak of 
 Republican virtue, had not only overturned the throne and the alter, 
 and driven the nobles of France into exile, and her priests into cap- 
 
 i_ Dsc. 20th, 1793. b. March 5th See p.
 
 462 MODERN HISTORY. [PAST II 
 
 tivity, but which had also shed the blood of more than a million of 
 her best citizens.* 
 
 40. The full of Robespierre placed the direction of public affairs 
 in the hands of more moderate men ; but the genius of Carnot still 
 controlled the military operations, which were conducted with remark- 
 able energy and success. In consequence of the extinction of civil 
 employments, and the forced requisition on the people, the whole 
 talent of France was centered in the army, whose numbers, by the be- 
 ginning of October, 1794, amounted to twelve hundred thousand men. 
 After deducting the garrisons, the sick, and those destined for the 
 service of the interior, there remained upwards of seven hundred 
 thousand ready to act on the offensive ; a greater force than could 
 then be raised by all the monarchies of Europe. The French territory 
 resembled an immense military camp, and all the young men of the 
 country seemed pressing to the frontier to join the armies. 
 
 41. England, at the head of the allies in the war against France, 
 xxrv THE ma( ^ c preparations that were considered " unparalleled ;" 
 
 ENGLISH and it was soon easy to see that the latter was destined 
 VICTORIOUS ^ Q b ecorne irresistible on land, and the former to acquire 
 
 AT SEA, AND ' 
 
 THE FRENCH the dominion of the seas. In the early part of the season 
 ON LAND. t j ie ]? reDCn were dispossessed of all their West India 
 possessions ; the island of Corsica, in the Mediterranean, was cap- 
 tured ; and on the 1st of June, a French fleet of twenty-six ships of 
 the line was defeated, and six vessels taken by the English admiral 
 Howe, off the western coast of France. But numerous victories on 
 the land far more than compensated for these losses ; and the cam- 
 paign was one of the most glorious in the annals of France. At the 
 beginning of the year the allies were pressing heavily on all the 
 frontiers : at its close, the Spaniards, defeated in Biscay 1 and Cata- 
 lonia, were suing for peace : the Italians, driven over the Alps, were 
 trembling for the fate of their own country : the allied forces had 
 everywhere recrossed the Rhine : Holland had ben revolutionized 
 
 1. Biscay is a district of northern Spain, on the Bay of Biscay, and adjoining France. It 
 comprises Biscay Proper, Alava, and Guipuzcoa, the three Basque provinces. The Basques 
 have a peculiar language, which is undoubtedly of great antiquity. Some have attempted to 
 trace it, as a dialect of the Phoenician, to the Hebrew. It has some similarity to the Hungarian 
 and Turkish. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 * The Republican writer, Prudhomrae, gives a list of one million, twenty-two thousand 
 three hundred and fifty-one persons, who suffered a violent death during this period, of whom 
 more than eighteen thousand perished by the guillotine. In his enumeration are not included 
 the massacres at Versailles In the prisons, &c. nor those shot at Toulon and Marseilles.
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 463 
 
 and subdued ; and the English troops had returnei home, or had fled 
 for refuge into the States of Hanover. 
 
 42. The failure of the allies in the campaigns of 1793 and 1794 
 was in great part owing to a want of cordial cooperation xxy SKCOND 
 among them, occasioned by the prospect held out to PARTITION 
 Russia, Prussia, and Austria, of obtaining a further share OF POLAND - 
 in the partition of ill-fated Poland. While Poland was a prey to 
 civil dissensions, it was invaded in 1792 by Russia, and early in the 
 following year by Prussia ; and the result was a second partition of 
 the Polish territory among the invading powers, with the concurrence 
 and sanction of Austria, the king of Prussia assigning as reasons 
 for his treachery and disregard of former treaties, that the " danger- 
 ous principles of French Jacobinism were fa~st gaining ground in that 
 country." 
 
 43. Scarcely had this iniquitous scheme been consummated, when 
 the patriots of Poland, with Kosciusko at their head, arose against 
 their invaders, whom they drove from the country. But xxyr THiaD 
 Poland was too feeble to contend successfully against PARTITION 
 the fearful odds that were brought against her. Kosciusko OF FOLAND - 
 was defeated, wounded, and taken prisoner by the Russians ; and 
 the result of the brief struggle was the third and last partition 
 of- Poland, among Russia, Prussia, and Austria. To effect this un- 
 hallowed object, Austria and Prussia had withdrawn a portion of 
 their troops from the French frontiers, and thus the time was allowed 
 to pass by, when a check might have been given to French ambition. 
 
 [1795.] 44. The first coalition against the French Republic, 
 formed in March 1793, embraced England, Austria, 
 Prussia, Holland, Spain, Portugal, the two Sicilies, the SOLUTION OF 
 
 THE FIRST 
 
 Roman States. Sardinia, and Piedmont ; but the successes 
 
 7 ; ' COALITION 
 
 of France in the campaign of 1794 led to the dissolution AGAINST 
 of this confederacy early in 1 795. The conquest of Hoi- FRAN C E - 
 land decided the wavering policy of Prussia, which now, by a treaty 
 of peace, agreed to live on friendly terms with the Republic, and 
 not to furnish succor to its enemies ; and before the first of August, 
 Spain also, completely humbled, withdrew from the coalition ; and 
 thus the whole weight of the war fell on Austria and England. 
 Russia had indeed already become a party to the war against France, 
 but her alliance was as y-3t productive of no results, as the attention 
 of the Empress Catherine was wholly engrossed in securing the im- 
 mense territories which had fallen to her by the partition of .Poland.
 
 464 MODERN HISTORY. [PART U 
 
 i 
 
 45. During the year 1795 the reaction against the Reign of Terror 
 was general throughout France : the Jacobin clubs were broken up, 
 the Parisian populace disarmed, and many of the prominent mem- 
 bers of the Revolutionary tribunals justly expiated their crimes on 
 
 the scaffold. As yet all the powers of government were 
 NEW CON- centered in the National Convention ; but the people now 
 STITUTION. b e g an t demand of it a constitution, and the surrender 
 of the dictatorship which it had so long exercised. A constitution 
 was formed, by which the legislative power was divided between two 
 Councils, appointed by delegates chosen by the people, that of the Five- 
 Hundred, and that of the Ancients, the former having the power of 
 originating laws, and the latter that of passing or rejecting them. The 
 executive power was lodged in the hands of a Directory of five mem- 
 bers, nominated by the council of Five-Hundred, and approved by 
 that of the Ancients. 
 
 46. This constitution was to be submitted to the armies of the 
 people for ratification : but the convention, composed of the very 
 
 men who had at first directed the Revolution, who had 
 
 XXIX. INSUR- 
 RECTION IN voted for the death of the king, and the execution of the 
 
 PARIS. Girondists, and who had finally overthrown the tyrant 
 Robespierre, still unwilling abruptly to relinquish its power, decreed 
 that two -thirds of their number should have a seat in the new legis- 
 lative councils. This measure met with great opposition, and caused 
 intense excitement. Although the armies, and a large majority of 
 the people, accepted the constitution, a formidable insurrection against 
 the convention broke out in Paris, headed by the Royalists, compris- 
 ing many of the best citizens, and supported by the Parisian National 
 Guard numbering thirty thousand men, but destitute of artillery. 
 The convention, hastily collecting to its support a body of five thou- 
 sand regular troops assembled in the neighborhood of Paris, placed 
 them under the command of General Barras, who intrusted all his 
 military arrangements to his second in command, the young artillery 
 officer who had distinguished himself in the reduction of Toulon 
 Napoleon Bonaparte. The latter was indefatigable in making pre- 
 parations for the defence of the convention, and when his little band 
 was_ surrounded and attacked by the Parisians, he replied at once by 
 a discharge of cannon loaded with grape shot, firing with as much 
 spirit as though he were directing his guns upon Austrian battalions. 
 In a few hours tranquillity was restored ' and this was the last, in- 
 surrection of the people in the French Revolution. The new gov-
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 465 
 
 ernment Tbeing established, the convention, which had passed through 
 so many stormy scenes, and had experienced so great changes in 
 sentiment, determined to finish its career by a signal act of clemency, 
 and after having abolished the punishment of death, and published a 
 general amnesty, it declared its mission of consolidating the Repub- 
 lic accomplished, and its session closed. (Oct. 26th, 1795.) 
 
 47. The military events of 1795 were of much less importance 
 than those of the two former years. England indeed maintained her 
 supremacy at sea ; but the Austrians barely sustained themselves ir. 
 Italy ; and success was evenly balanced on the side of Germany ; 
 while a general lassitude, and uncommon financial embarrassments, 
 the result of the recent extraordinary revolutionary exertions, pre- 
 vailed throughout prance. 
 
 [1796.] 48. In the spring of 1796 the French Directory sent 
 three armies into the field ; that of the Sambre and xxx jNyA 
 Meuse, 1 under Jourdan, numbering seventy thousand SIGN OF 
 men; that of the Khine and Moselle, under Moreau, GERMANY - 
 numbering seventy-five thousand ; and the army of Italy under Bona- 
 parte, numbering forty-two thousand. Jourdan and Moreau made 
 successful irruptions into Germany, but they were stopped in their 
 mid-career of victory hj the Arch-duke Charles of Austria, one of 
 the ablest generals of his time, and eventually compelled to retreat 
 across the Rhine. 
 
 49. The operations of the army of Bonaparte in Italy were 
 more eventful. Although opposed by greatly supe- 
 rior forces, the indefatigable energy and extraordinary ARMY OF 
 military talents of the youthful general crowned the ITALY. 
 campaign with a series of brilliant victories, almost unparalleled in 
 the annals of war. Napoleon, on assuming the command, found his 
 army in an almost destitute condition, maintaining a doubtful contest 
 on the mountain ridges of the Italian frontier. Rapidly forcing his 
 way into the fertile plains of the interior, he soon compelled the 
 king of Sardinia to purchase a dishonorable peace, subdued Piedmont, 
 conquered Lombardy, humbled all the Italian States, and defeated, 
 and almost destroyed, four powerful armies which Austria sent against 
 him. The battles of Montenotte 2 and Millessimo, 3 the terrible pas- 
 
 1. Sambre and Mease. The Sambre unites with the Meuse at Namur. (Map No. XV.) 
 
 2. April 11-J2, 1790. Montenotte is a mountain ridge near t'io Mediterranean, a short dis- 
 tance west from Genoa. 
 
 3. April 13-14. Millessimo is a email village twenty-eight miles west from Genoa. 
 
 V*
 
 466 MODERN HIS10RY. [PABT IL 
 
 sage of the bridge of Lodi, 1 the victory of Arcole," and fall of Man 
 tua* in fine, the brilliant results of the campaign, excited the utmost 
 enthusiasm throughout Frafe, and Napoleon at once became the 
 favorite of the people. The councils of government repeatedly de- 
 creed that the army of Italy had deserved well of their country 
 and the standard which Napoleon had borne on the bridge of Arcole 
 was given to him to be preserved as a precious trophy in his family. 
 50. England had for some time been greatly agitated by a division 
 xxxn PIS- ^ pi n i n respecting the policy of continuing the war 
 TURBANCKS against France ; important parliamentary reforms were 
 SGLAND. Demanded -a party spirit became extremely violent ; and 
 on several occasions the country seemed on the brink of revolution. 1 " 
 Added to these internal difficulties, in the month of August, 1796, 
 Spain concluded a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, with 
 France, and this was followed, in the month of October , d by a formal 
 declaration of war against Great Britain. Still, England maintained 
 her supremacy at sea, and greatly extended her conquests in the 
 East and West Indies, 6 while a powerful expedition f which France 
 had prepared for the invasion of Ireland was dispersed by tempests, 
 and obliged to return without even effecting a landing. 
 
 1. May 10th. The bridge of Lodi crosses the Adda, twenty miles south-west from Milan. 
 ,M ap No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Nov. 15-17. Arcole is a small village a short distance east of the Adige, thirteen miles 
 eouth-west from Verona, and one hundred miles east from Milan. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. Mantua is a fortified towii of Austrian Italy, on hoth sides of the Mincio, twenty-one miles 
 eouth-west from Verona. It derives its principal celebrity from its being the native country of 
 Virgil. After the conquest of northern Italy by Charlemagne, Mantua became a republic, and 
 continued under that form of government till the twelfth century, when the Gonzaga family 
 acquired the chief direction of its affairs. They were subsequently raised to the title of dukes, 
 and held possession of Mantua till 1707, when it was taken by the Austrians. Mantua sur- 
 rendered to Napoleon, Feb. 3d, 1797, after a siege of nearly six months. In July, 1799, it sur- 
 rendered to the Austrians, after a siege of nearly four months. {Map No. XVII.) 
 
 a. For increasing democratic power fcc., for which purpose there were numerous associations 
 throughout the kingdom, and the reformers were charged with a desire of subverting the mon 
 archy, and establishing a republican constitution, similar to that of France. 
 
 b. Kings' carriage surrounded pelted with stones, &c., Oct. 29th, 1795, and the monarch nar- 
 rowly escaped the fury of the populace. A crisis in money matters ccmpels the Bank of Eng- 
 land to suspend cash payments, Feb. K97. Discontents in the navy, and mutiny of the channel 
 fleet, April, 1797. Second mutiny, May and June, and blockade of the Thames. 
 
 c. Of San Ildefonso. 
 
 d. Oct. 2d. 
 
 e. St. Lucia, Essequibo, and Demarara, in the West Indies, were reduced in May, 1796, and 
 early in the same year Ceylon, the Malaccas, Cochin, Trincomalee, &c., in the East Indies. The 
 Cape of Good Hope hud been previously taken by the English. 
 
 f. The French fleet under Hoche, carrying twenty-five thousand 'and forces, sailed Dec. 15lh, 
 1796. A formidable conspiracy existed in Ireland to throw off the English yoke and establish 
 a republican government, and alliance with France.
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 467 
 
 [1797.] 51. Early in the spring of 1797, Napoleon, after stimu- 
 lating the ardor of his soldiers by a spirited address, a in 
 
 XXX11I. 
 
 which he recounted to them the splendid victories which NAPOLEON'S 
 they had already won, set out from Northern Italy b at AUSTRIAN 
 the head of sixty thousand men, in several divisions, to 
 carry the war into the hereditary States of Austria. Opposed to 
 him was the Arch-duke Charles at the head of superior forces, only 
 a part of which, however, could be brought into the field at the be- 
 ginning of the campaign. Eapidly passing over the mountains, Na- 
 poleon drove his enemies before him, and was ready to descend into 
 the plains which spread out before the Austrian capital, when pro- 
 posals of peace were made and accepted ; and in less than a month 
 after the first movement of the army from winter quarters, the pre- 
 liminaries of a treaty between France and Austria were 
 
 XXXIV 
 
 signed. Tke final treaty was concluded at Campo TEEATr OF 
 Formio 1 on the 17th of October following. Spain and CAMPO 
 Holland suffered severely in this war : Austria was re- 
 munerated for the loss of Mantua by the cession of Venice ; while 
 France obtained a preponderating control over Italy, and her frontiers 
 were extended to the Rhine. Thus terminated the brilliant Italian 
 campaigns of Napoleon. Italy was the greatest sufferer in these 
 contests. " Her territory was partitioned ; her independence ruined, 
 her galleries pillaged ; the trophies of art had followed the car of 
 victory ; and the works of immortal genius, which no wealth could 
 purchase, had been torn from their native seats, and violently trans- 
 planted into a foreign soil." d 
 
 52. During these events of foreign war, the strife of parties was 
 raging in France. In the elections of May, 1797, the Royalists pre- 
 vailed by large majorities, and royalist principles were boldly advo- 
 cated in the legislative councils, so great a change had been pro- 
 
 1. Campo Formio is a small town and castle of northern Italy, near the head of the Adriatic. 
 The negotiations for this peace were carried on by the Austrians at Udine, a short distance 
 sorth-east of Campo Formio, and by Bonaparte at the castle of Passeriano. The treaty wa 
 dated at Campo Formio, because this place lay between Udine and Passeriano, although the 
 ambassadors had never held any conferences there. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 a " You have been victorious," said he, " in fourteen pitched battles and seventy combats ; 
 you have made one hundred thousand prisoners, taken five hundred pieces of field artillery, 
 two thousand of heavy calibre, and four sets of ponloons. Tho contributions you have levied 
 on the vanquished countries have clothed, fed, and paid the army ; you have> besides, added 
 thirty millions of francs to the public treasury, and you have enriched the museum of Paris 
 with three hundred masterpieces of the works of art, the produce of thirty centuries." 
 
 b. March 10th. c. April 9th, at Judemberg. d. Alison.
 
 468 MODERN HISTORY. [PARF IL 
 
 duced in public opinion by the sanguinary excesses of the Revolution 
 But the vigilance of the Revolutionary party was again aroused, 
 and the Directory, who were the Republican leaders, becoming 
 alarmed for their own existence, but being assured of the support 
 of the army, determined upon decisive measures. On the 
 night of the 3d of September, twelve thousand troops, 
 
 KN 1 * ' 
 
 OK MILITARY under the command of Augereau, and with the concurring 
 
 >ESPOTISM support of Napoleon, were introduced into the capital ; 
 
 the Royalist leaders, and the obnoxious members of the 
 
 two councils, were seized and imprisoned; and when the Parisians 
 
 awoke from their sleep, they found the streets filled with troops, the 
 
 walls covered with proclamations, and military despotism -established.* 
 
 The Directory now took upon themselves the supreme power, while 
 
 their opponents were banished to the pestilential marshes of Guiana. 1 
 
 53. The year 1798 opened with immense military preparations 
 [1798] f r the invasion of England, the only power then 
 
 xxxvi. FEE- a t -war with France. Unusual activity prevailed, not 
 FOR THB IN- on ty * n * ne harbors of France and Holland, but also of 
 VASION OK Spain and Italy : all the naval resources of France were 
 VGLAND. p u j. j n requisition, and an army of nearly one hundred 
 and fifty thousand men was collected along the English Channel, 
 under the name of the Army of England, the command of which was 
 given to Napoleon. But the hazards of the expedition induced Na- 
 poleon to direct his ambitious views to another quarter, and, after 
 xxxvn considerable difiiculty, he persuaded the Directory to 
 EXPEDITION give him the command of an expedition to Egypt, a 
 TO EGYPT. p rov i nce O f the Turkish empire. The ultimate objects 
 of Napoleon appear to have been, not only to conquer Egypt and 
 Syria, but to strike at the Indian possessions of England by the 
 overland route through Asia, and after a series of conquests that 
 should render his name as terrible as that of Ghenghis Khan or Tam- 
 erlane, establish an Oriental empire that should vie with that of Al- 
 exander 
 
 54. Filled with these visions of military glory, Napoleon sailed 
 from Toulon on the 19th of May with a fleet of five hundred sail. 
 carrying about forty thousand soldiers, and ten thousand seamen, 
 He took with him artisans of -all kinds ; he formed a complete col- 
 lection of philosophical and mathematical instruments ; and about 
 
 1. French Guiana. See Surinam, p. 393. 
 
 a. Called the Revolution of the eighteenth Fructidor.
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 469 
 
 a hundred of the most illustrious scientific men of France, reposing 
 implicit confidence in the youthful general, hastened to join the ex- 
 pedition, whose destination was still unknown to them. 
 
 55. The fleet first sailed to Malta, 1 which quickly surrendered a 
 its almost impregnable fortresses to the sovereignty of France, the 
 way having been prei iously prepared by a conspiracy fomented by 
 the secret agents of J.'apoleon. Fortunate in avoiding the fleet of 
 the English admiral Nelson, then cruising in the Mediterranean, the ar- 
 mament arrived before Alexandria on the first of July, and Napo- 
 leon, hastily landing a part of his forces, marched against the city, 
 which he took by storm before the dismayed Turks had time to 
 make preparations for defence. 
 
 56. With consummate policy Napoleon proclaimed to the Arab 
 population b that he had come to protect their religion, restore their 
 rights, and punish their usurpers, the Mamelukes; and thus he 
 sought, by arming one part of the people against the other, to 
 
 1. Malta. (See also p. 152.) On the decline of the Roman empire Malta fell under the do- 
 minion of the Goths, and afterwards of the Saracens. It was subject to the crown of Sicily 
 from 1190 to 1525, when the emperor Charles V. conferred it on the Knights Hospitallers of 
 St. John, who had been expelled from Rhodes by the Turks. In 1565 it was unsuccessfully be- 
 sieged by the Turks; the knights, under their heroic master Valette, founder of the city called 
 by his name, finally compelling the enemy to retreat with great loss. In 1798 it fell into the 
 hajids of Napoleon ; but the French garrisons surrendered to the English, Sept. 5th, 1800. The 
 treaty of Paris, in 1814, annexed the island to Great Britain. 
 
 a. June 12th, 1798. 
 
 b. The population of Egypt at this time, consisting of the wrecks of several nations, was 
 composed of three classes ; Copts, Arabs, and Turks. The Copts, the ancient inhabitants of 
 Egypt, a poor, despised, and brutalized race, amounted at most to two hundred thousand. 
 The Arabs, subdivided into several classes, formed the great mass of the population : 1st, there 
 were the Sheiks or chiefs, great lauded proprietors, who were at the head of the priesthood, 
 the magistracy, religion, and learning : 2d, there was a large class of smaller landholders ; and, 
 3d, the great mass of the Arab population, who, as hired peasants, by the name of fellahs, in a 
 condition little better than that of slaves, cultivated the soil for their masters ; and 4th, the 
 Bedouin tribes, or wandering Arabs, children of the desert, who would never attach them- 
 eelves to the soil, but who wandered about, seeking pasturage for their numerous herds of 
 cattle in the Oases, or fertile spots of the desert on both sides of the Nile. They could bring 
 into the field twenty thousand horsemen, matchless in bravery, and in the skill with which 
 their horses were managed, but destitute of discipline, and fit only to harass an enemy, not to 
 flght him. The third race was that of the Turks, who were introduced at the time of the con- 
 juest of Egypt by the Sultans of Constantinople. They numbered about two hundred thousand, 
 and were divided into Turks and Mamelukes. Most of the former were engaged in trades and 
 handicrafts in the towns. The latter, who were Circassian slaves purchased from Lmong the 
 handsomest boys of the Circassians, and carried to Egypt when young, and there trained to 
 the practice of arms, were, with their chiefs and owners, the beys, the real masters and tyrants 
 of the country. The entire body consisted of about twelve thousand horsemen, and each 
 Mameluke had two fellahs to wait upon him. " They are all splendidly armed : in their girdles 
 are always to be seen a pair of pistols and a poniard ; from the saddle are suspended another 
 pair of pistols and a hatchet ; on one side is a sabre, on the other a blunderbuss, and the 
 servant on foot carries i. carbine."
 
 470 MODERN HISTORY. [PAHI H 
 
 neutralize their neans of resistance. Leaving three thousand sol- 
 diers in garrison at Alexandria, he set out on the 6th of July for 
 Cairo 1 at the head of thirty thousand men. After some 
 
 BATTLE OK skirmishing on the route with the Mamelukes, on the 
 THE 21st of the month he arrived opposite Cairo, on the west 
 
 YRAMIDS. g j ( j e Q . ^ Nile, where Mourad Bey had formed an in- 
 trenched camp, defended by twenty thousand men, while on the 
 plain, between the camp and the pyramids, were drawn up nearly 
 ten thousand Mameluke horsemen. Napoleon arranged his army 
 in five divisions, each in the form of a square, with the artillery 
 at the angles, and the baggage in the centre ; but scarcely had he 
 made his dispositions, when eight thousand of the Mameluke -horse- 
 men, in one body, admirably mounted and magnificently dressed, 
 and rending the air with their cries, advanced at full gallop upon the 
 squares of infantry. Falling upon the foremost division, they were 
 met by a terrible fire of grape and musketry, which drove them from 
 the front round the sides of the column. Furious at the unexpected 
 resistance, they dashed their horses against the rampart of bayonets, 
 and threw their pistols at the heads of the grenadiers, but all in 
 yain, the tide was rolled back in confusion, and the survivors fled 
 towards the camp, which was quickly stormed, its artillery, stores, 
 and baggage were taken, and the " Battle of the Pyramids" was soon 
 at an end. The victors lost scarcely a hundred a men in the action, 
 while a great portion of the defenders of the camp perished in the 
 Nile ; and, of the splendid array of Mameluke horsemen that had so 
 gallantly borne down upon the French columns, not more than two 
 thousand five hundred escaped with Mourad Bey into Upper Egypt. 
 
 57. A few days after the battle of the Pyramids, Napoleon expe- 
 xxxix rienced a severe reverse by the destruction of his fleet 
 
 BATTLE OF which he had left moored in the Bay of Aboukir near 
 
 THE NILE. Alexandria. On the morning of the 1st of August the 
 British fleet, under the command of Admiral Nelson, appeared off 
 
 1. Cairo (ki'-ro) the modern capital of Egypt, and the second city of the Mohammedan 
 world, is near the eastern bank of the Nile, about twelve miles above the apex of its delta, 
 audone hundred and twelve miles south-east from Alexandria. Population variously estimated 
 at from two hundred and flfty to three hundred thousand. Cairo is supposed to have been 
 founded about the year 970, by an Arab general of the first Fatimate caliph. The neighbor 
 hoC'd of Cairo abounds with places and objects possessing great interest, among which are 
 UK- pyramids, and the remains of the city of Heliopolis, the On of the scriptures. 
 No. XII.) 
 
 a. "Scariely a hundred killed and wounded." Thiers. "The victors hardly lost two hu 
 dred men ! -i the action." Alison.
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 471 
 
 the harbor, and on the afternoon of the same day the attack was 
 commenced, several of the British ships penetrating between the 
 French fleet and the shore, so as to place their enemies between two 
 fires. The action that followed was terrific. The darkness of night 
 was illumined by the incessant discharge of more than two thousand 
 cannon ; and during the height of the contest the French ship 
 L'Orient, of one hundred and twenty guns, having been for some 
 time on fire, blew up with a tremendous explosion, by which every 
 ship in both fleets was shaken to its centre. The result of this fa- 
 mous " Battle of the Nile" was the destruction of the French naval 
 power in the Mediterranean, the shutting up of the French army in 
 Egypt, cut off from its resources, with scarcely the hope of return, 
 the dispelling of Napoleon's dreams of Oriental conquest, and the 
 revival of the coalition in Europe against the French republic. 
 Turkey declared war ; Russia sent a fleet into the Mediterranean ; 
 the king of Naples took up arms ; and the emperor of Austria, yield- 
 ing to the solicitations of England, recommenced hostilities. 
 
 58. Notwithstanding the loss of his fleet, and the storm that was 
 arising in Europe, Napoleon showed no design of abandoning his 
 conquests. With remarkable energy he established mills, foundries, 
 and manufactories of gunpowder throughout Egypt, and soon put the 
 country in an admirable state of defence. Upper Egypt was con- 
 quered by a division under Desaix, who penetrated beyond the ruins 
 of Thebes ; and finally, in the early part of February, [17991 
 1799, Napoleon, leaving sixteen thousand men as a re- XL. SYRIAN 
 serve in Egypt, set out at the head of only fourteen thou- E 
 
 sand men for the conquest of Syria, where the principal army of the 
 Sultan was assembling. On the 6th of March, Jaffa, the Joppa of 
 antiquity, the first considerable town of Palestine, was carried by 
 storm, and four thousand of the garrison who had capitulated were 
 mercilessly put to death an eternal and ineffaceable blot on the 
 memory of Napoleon. 
 
 59. On the 16th of March the French army made its appearance be- 
 fore Acre, where the Pacha of Syria had shut himself up 
 
 with all his treasures, determined to make the most des- 
 
 perate resistance. He was aided in the defence of the 
 
 place by an English officer, Sir Sidney Smith, who commanded a 
 
 small squadron on the coast. Foiled in every attempt to take the 
 
 place by storm, Napoleon was finally compelled to order a retreat, 
 
 after a siege of more than two mouths, having in the meantime, with
 
 472 MODERN HISTORY. [PABT II 
 
 only six thousand of his veterans, defeated an army of thirty thou 
 sand Oriental militia in the battle of Mount Tabor. 1 On the morn- 
 ing of that battle Kleber had left Nazareth 2 to make an attack on 
 the Turkish camp near the Jordan, but he met the advancing hosts 
 in the plain in the vicinity of Mount Tabor. Throwing his little 
 army into squares, with the artillery at the angles, he bravely main- 
 tained the unequal combat for six. hours, when Napoleon, 
 
 XLII. BATTLE 
 
 OF MOUNT arriving on the heights which overlooked the field of bat- 
 TABOR. tj 6) an( j distinguishing his men by the steady flaming 
 spots amid the moving throng by which they were surrounded, an- 
 nounced, by the discharge of a twelve pounder, that succor was at 
 hand. The arrival of fresh troops soon converted the battle into a 
 complete rout ; the Turkish camp, with all its baggage and ammuni- 
 tion, fell into the hands of the conquerors, and the army which the 
 country people called " innumerable as the sands of the sea of the 
 stars of heaven" was driven beyond the Jordan and dispersed, never 
 again to return. 
 
 60. Napoleon reached Egypt on the 1st of June, having lost more 
 than three thousand men in his Syrian expedition ; but scarcely had 
 he restored quiet to that country, when, on the llth of July, a body 
 of nine thousand Turks, admirably equipped, and having a numerous 
 pack of artillery, landed at Aboukir Bay, having been transported 
 
 XLm thither by the squadron of Sir Sidney Smith. Napoleon 
 
 BATTLE OF immediately left Cairo with all the forces which he could 
 
 ABOUKIR. comman( j ) an( j although he found the Turks at Aboukir 
 
 strongly intrenched, he did not hesitate to attack them with inferior 
 
 forces. The result was the total annihilation of the Turkish army, 
 
 five thousand being drowned in the Bay of Aboukir, two thousand 
 
 killed in battle, and two thousand taken prisoners. 
 
 61. By some papers which fell into his hands, Napoleon was now, 
 for the first time, informed of the state of affairs in Europe. Early 
 in the season the allies had collected a force of two hundred and fifty 
 thousand men between the German ocean and the Adriatic, as a bar- 
 rier against French ambition ; and fifty thousand Russians, under the 
 veteran Suwarrow, were on the march to swell their numbers. To 
 this vast force the French could oppose, along their eastern frontiers, 
 
 1. Mount Tabor is twenty-five miles south-east from Acre, and fifty-three north-east from Je- 
 rusalem. It is the mountain on which occurred the transfiguration of Christ. Matthew, xvii. 
 2, and Mark, ix. 2. (Map No. VI.) 
 
 2. JVozaretA, a small town of Palestine, celebrated as having been the early residence of the 
 founder of Christianity, is seventy miles north-ast from Jerusalem. (Map No. VI.)
 
 CHAP. V.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 473 
 
 and scattered over Italy, an army of only one hundred and seventy 
 thousand. In Italy the united Russians and Austrians gradually 
 gained ground until the French lost all their posts in that country 
 except Genoa : many desperate, battles were fought in Switzerland, 
 but victory generally followed the allied powers, while, in Germany, 
 the French were forced back upon the Rhine : Corfu had been con- 
 quered by the Russians and English, and Malta was closely block- 
 aded. 
 
 62. When Napoleon was informed of these reverses of the French 
 arms, his decision was immediately made, and leaving Kleber in com- 
 mand of the army of Egypt, he secretly embarked for France. After 
 a protracted voyage, in which he was in constant fear of being cap- 
 tured by British cruisers, he landed at Frejus 1 on the 9th of Octo- 
 ber, and on the 18th found himself once more in Paris. The most 
 enthusiastic joy pervaded the whole country on account of his return. 
 The eyes, the wishes, and the hopes of the people, who were dissatis- 
 fied with the existing state of things, were all turned on him : men 
 of all professions paid their court to him, as one in whose hands 
 were, already, the destinies of their country : the Directory alone 
 distrusted and feared him. 
 
 63. Napoleon, perceiving that the French people had grown weary 
 of the Directory, and relying on the support of the army, 
 concerted, with a few leading spirits, the overthrow of OVERTHROW 
 the government. As preliminary measures, the Council OF THE 
 
 of the Ancients was induced to appoint him commander 
 of the National Guard and of all the military in Paris, and to de- 
 cree the removal of the entire Legislative body to St. Cloud, 7 under 
 his protection ; but the Council of Five Hundred, alarmed by ru- 
 mors of the approaching dictatorship, raised so furious an opposition 
 against him, that Napoleon was in imminent danger. As the only 
 resource left him, he appealed to his comrades in arms, and on the 
 9th of November, 1 799, a body of grenadiers entering the Legisla- 
 tive hall by his orders, cleared it of its members; and thus military 
 
 1. Frejus is a town of south-eastern France, in a spacious plain, one mile from the Mediter- 
 ranean, and forty-five miles north-east from Toulon. Napoleon landed at St. Raphael, a small 
 fishing village about a itile and a-half from Frejus. Frejus was a place >( importance in the 
 time of Julius Csesar, who gave it his own name. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. St. Cloud is a delightful village six miles west from Paris, containing a royal castle and 
 magnificent garden, which were much embellished by Napoleon. Napoleon chose St. Cloud 
 for his residence ; hence the expression cabinet of St. Cloud. Under the former government 
 the phrase was, cabinet of yersam.es, or cabinet of the Tuileriet.
 
 474 MODERN HISTORY. 
 
 force was left triumphant in the place of the constitution and the 
 
 XLV NAPO- ^ dws ' ^ new const i tut i n was soon formed, by which 
 LEON FIRST the executive power was intrusted to three consuls, of 
 CONSUL. wfl om Napoleon was the chief. The " First consul," as 
 Napoleon was styled, was in everything but in name a monarch. Not 
 only in Paris, but throughout all France, the feeling was in favor of 
 the new government ; for the people, weary of anarchy, rejoiced at 
 the prospect of repose under the strong arm of power, and were as 
 unanimous to terminate the Revolution as, in 1789, they had been 
 to commence it. The Revolution had passed through all its changes ; 
 monarchical, republican, and democratic ; it closed with the mili- 
 tary character ; while the liberty which it strove to establish was im- 
 molated by one of its own favorite heroes, on the altar of personal 
 ambition
 
 CHAP. VL] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 475 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 THE WARS OF NAPOLEON. 
 
 ANALYSIS. [EVENTS OF THE YEAR 1800.] 1. Napoleon's proposals for peace. Rejected 
 by the British government. 2. Military force of Great Britain and Austria. Situation of France. 
 Effect of Napoleon's government 3. Disposition of the French forces. 4. Successes of Moreau. 
 [Engen. Moeskirch.] Massena is shut up in Genoa. Napoleon passes over the Great St. 
 Bernard. [Great St. Bernard.] 5. Surprise of the Austrians. Napoleon's progress. Victory 
 of Marcngo. [Marengo.] 6. Efforts at negotiation. Malta surrenders to the British. 7. Oper- 
 ations of the French and Austrians in Bavaria. [Hohenlinden.] Passage of the Splugen by 
 Macdonald. [Splugen.] Armistice. Peace of Luneville. [Luneville.] 8. Maritime confed- 
 eracy against England. Its effect. Previous orders of the Danish and Russian governments. 
 
 9. [EVENTS OF 1801.] England sends a powerful fleet to the Baltic. Battle of Copenhagen. 
 10. The Russian emperor Paul is strangled, and succeeded by Alexander. Dissolution of the 
 League of the North. 11. The French army in Egypt. Capitulation. General peace. [Amiens.] 
 
 12. [EVENTS OF 1802, THE YEAR OF PEACE.] Internal Affairs of France. Napoleon made 
 consul for life. 13. Conduct of Is apoleon in his relations with foreign States. Holland the 
 Italian republics the Swiss cantons. Attempt to recover St. Domingo. [Historical account 
 of St. Domingo.] 14. Circumstances leading to a RENEWAL OF THE WAR IN 1803. Hostile 
 acts of England and France. 
 
 15. First military operations of the French, in the year 1803. [Hanover.] Preparations for 
 the invasion of England. 16. Rebellion in Ireland. Conspiracy against Napoleon early in 
 1804. The affair of the Duke D'Enghien. [Baden.] 17. Hostile acts of England against Spain- 
 The latter joins France. 18. Napoleon, emperor, May, 1804 crowned by the pope anointed 
 sovereign of Italy, May, 1805. 
 
 19. New coalition against France. Prussia remains neutral. Beginning of the war by Aus- 
 tria. 20. The French forces. Napoleon victorious at Ulm. [Ulm.] English naval victory of 
 Trafalgar. [Trafalgar.] Additional victories of Napoleon, and treaty of Presburg, Dec. 1805, 
 [Austerlitz.] 
 
 [1806.] 21. Conquests of the English. [Mahrattas. Buenos Ayres.] Napoleon rapidly ex- 
 tends his supremacy over the continent. The affairs of Naples, Holland, and Germany. 22. 
 Circumstances which led Prussia to join the coalition against Napoleon. 23. Napoleon's victo- 
 ries over the Prussians. He enters Berlin. [Jena. Auerstadt.] 24. The Berlin decrees. Na- 
 poleon in Poland. Battle of Pultusk. Battle of Eylau, Feb. 1807. Fall of Dantzic. [Eylau. 
 Dantzic.] 25. Battle of Friedland. [Friedland. Niemen.] The treaty of Tilsit. Losses suf- 
 fered by Prussia. [Tilsit. Westphalia.] 26. Circumstances that led to the bombardment of 
 Copenhagen, by the English fleet. Denmark joins France. Portuguese affairs. The French 
 in Lisbon. [Rio Janeiro. Brazil.] 27. The designs of Napoleon against the Peninsular mon- 
 archs. Affairs of Spain, 1808. Godoy abdication of the Spanish monarch, and his son Ferdi- 
 nand. Joseph Bonaparte becomes king of Spain, and Murat king of Naples. 28. Resistance 
 of the Spaniards and beginning of the Peninsular war. 29. Successes of the Spaniards at 
 Cadiz, Valencia, Saragossa, and Baylen. [Baylen. Ebro.] 30. War in Portugal, and 
 evacuation of that country by the French forces. [Oporto. Vimiera. Cintra.] 31. Napoleon 
 takes the field in person, and the British are rapidly diiven from Spain. [Reynose. Barfjoa. 
 Tudela. Corunna.]
 
 476 MODERN HISTORY. [PAST II 
 
 [1809.] 32. Austria suddenly renews the war. Victories of Napoleon, whc enters Vienna in 
 May ; and peace with Austria in October. [Eckmuhl. Aspern. Wagram/j 33. War with 
 the Tyrolese. British expedition to Holland. Continuance of the war iu the Spanish penin- 
 sula. Difficulties between Napoleon and the pope. 34. Napoleon's divorce from Josephine 
 and marriage with Maria Louisa of Austria, 1810. Effects of this marriage upon Napoleon's 
 future prospects. His conduct towards Holland. Sweden. His power in the central parts of 
 Europe. Jealousy of the Russian emperor. 35. Continuance of the war in the Spanish peuin- 
 lula. Wellington and Massena. [Ciudad Hodrigo. Busaco. Torres Vedras.] 36. The pe- 
 ninsula war during the year 1811. [Badajoz. Albuera.] 
 
 37. Events of the peninsular war from the beginning of 1812 to the retreat of the French 
 across the Pyrenees. [Salamanca. Vittoria ] 
 
 38. NAFOLKON'S RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN, 1812. Events that led to the opening of a war with 
 Russia. The opposing nations in this war. 39. The "Grand Army" of Napoleon. The op- 
 posing Russian force. 40. Napoleon crosses the Niemen, June 1812. Relreat of the Russians. 
 Early disasters of the French army. [Wilna.] 41. Onward march of the army. Battle of 
 Smolensko. Entrance of the deserted city. 42. Napoleon pursues the retreating Russians, 
 who make a stand at Borodino. [Borodino.] The evening before the battle. 43. Battle of 
 Borodino, Sept. 7th. 14. Continued retreat of the Russians, who abandon Moscow. The city, 
 on the entrance of the French. The burning of Moscow. Napoleon begins a retreat Oct. 19th. 
 45. The horrors of the retreat. 40. Napoleon at Smoleusko. He renews the retreat Nov. 
 14th. Battles of Krasuoi, and passage of the Beresina. [Krasnoi. Beresina.] Marshal Ney. 
 Napoleon abandons the army, and reaches Paris, Dec. 18th. His losses in the Russian campaign. 
 
 47. War between England and the United States of America. Mexico. The war in the 
 Indian seas. 
 
 [1813.] 48. Napoleon's preparations for renewing the war. Prussia, Sweden, and Austria. 
 Battles of Lutzen and Bautzen. Armistice, and congress of Prague. [Bautzen.] 49. War re- 
 newed Aug. 16th. Austria joins the allies. Battles. [Culm. Gross-Beren. Katsbach. Den- 
 newitz.] Ball les of Leipsic, and retreat of the French. Losses of the French. Revolts. Wellington. 
 
 [1814.] 50. General invasion of France. Bernadotte and Murat. Energy and talents of Na- 
 poleon. The allies march upon Paris, which capitulates. Deposition, and abdication, of Napo- 
 leon. Treaty between him and the allies. [Elba.] Louis XVIII. Restricted limits of France. 
 
 [1815.] 51. Congress of Vienna, and Napoleon's return from Elba, Marshal Ney. All France 
 submits to Napoleon. 52. Napoleon in vain attempts negotiations. Forces of the allies ; of 
 Napoleon. 53. Napoleon's policy, and movements. Battles of Ligny, Quatre Bras, Wavre, 
 and Waterloo. Second capitulation of Paris. Napoleon's abdication attempted escape 
 to America exile and death. 54. First objects of the allies. Return of Louis XVIIL 
 Execution of Ney, and Labedoyere. Fate of Murat. 55. Second treaty of Paris. Its terms. 
 Restoration of the pillaged treasures of art. 
 
 1. As soon as Napoleon was seated on the consular throne of 
 n 1 France he addressed to the British government an able 
 
 L EVENTS OF communication, making general proposals of peace. To 
 THE YEAR this a firm and dignified reply was given, ascribing the 
 evils which afflicted Europe to French aggression and 
 French ambition, and declining to enter into a general pacification 
 until France should present, in her internal condition and foreign 
 policy, firmer pledges than she had yet given, of stability in her own 
 government, and security to others. The answer of the British gov- 
 ernment forms the beginning of the second period of the war that 
 in which it was waged with Napoleon himself, the skilful director of 
 all the energies of the French nation. 
 
 2. War being resolved on, the most active measures were taken
 
 CHAP. VI] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 477 
 
 on botj sides to prosecute it with vigor. The land forces, equipped 
 militia, and seamen of Great Britain, amounted to three hundred 
 and seventy thousand men, and Austria furnished two hundred thou- 
 sand. France seemed poorly prepared to meet the coming storm. 
 Eler armies had just been defeated in Germany and Italy ; her 
 treasury was empty, and her government had lost all credit ; the af- 
 filiated Swiss and Dutch republics were discontented ; and the French 
 people were dissatisfied and disunited. But the establishment of a 
 firm and powerful government soon arrested these disorders ; the 
 finances were established on a solid basis ; the Vendean war was 
 amicably terminated ; Russia was detached from the British alli- 
 ance ; many of the banished nobility were recalled ; confidence, en- 
 ergy, and hope, revived ; and the prospects of France rapidly bright- 
 ened under the auspices of Napoleon. 
 
 3. At the opening of the campaign the French forces were dis- 
 posed in the following manner. The army of Germany, one hundred 
 and twenty-eight thousand strong, under the command of Moreau, 
 was posted on the northern confines of Switzerland and north along 
 the west bank of the Rhine : the army of Italy, thirty-six thousand 
 strong, under the command of Massena, occupied the crest < the 
 Alps in the neighborhood of Genoa ; while an army of reserve, of 
 fifty thousand men, of whom twenty thousand were veteran troops, 
 awaited the orders of the first consul, ready to fly to the aid of either 
 Moreau or Massena. 
 
 4. Moreau, victorious at Engen and Moeskirch, 1 drove the Aus- 
 trians back from the Rhine, and, penetrating to Munich, laid Bavaria 
 under contribution. Massena, after the most vigorous efforts against 
 a greatly superior force, was shut up in Genoa with a part of hia 
 army, and finally compelled to capitulate. Napoleon, on hearing the 
 reverses of Massena, resolved to cross the Swiss Alps and fall upon 
 Piedmont. Taking the route by the Great St. Bernard, 2 on the 17th 
 
 1. Engen and Moeskirch are in the south-eastern part of Baden, near the northern boundary 
 of Switzerland. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Great St. Bernard is the name given to a famous pass of the Alps, leading over the 
 mountains from the Swiss town of Martigny to the Italian town of Aosta. In its highest part 
 it rises to an elevation of more than eight thousand feet, being almost impassable in winter 
 and very dangerous in spring, from the avalanches. Near the summit of the pass is the 
 famous hospital founded in 902 by Bernard de Menthon, and occupied by brethren of the order 
 of St. Augustine, whose especial duty it is to assist and relieve travellers crossing the mountains. 
 In the midst of the tempests and snow storms, the monks, accompanied by dogs of extraordi- 
 nary size and sagacity, set out for the purpose of tracking those who have lost their way. If 
 they find the body of a traveller who has perished, they carry it into the vault of the dead, 
 where it remains lying on a table until another vietim i brought to occupy the place. Tt is
 
 478 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET IL 
 
 of May his army began the ascent of the mountain. The artillery 
 wagons were taken to pieces, and put on the backs of mules, while 
 a hundred large pines, each hollowed out to receive a piece of artil- 
 lery, were drawn up the mountain by the soldiers. To encourage the 
 men, the music of each regiment played at its head ; and where the 
 ascent was most difficult the charge was sounded. 
 
 5. Great was the surprise of the Austrians at beholding this large 
 army descending into the Italian plains. Before the end of the 
 month Napoleon was at Turin, and on the 2d of June, after little 
 opposition, he made his triumphant entry into Milan. On the 14th 
 he was attacked by the Austrian general Melas, at the head of greatly 
 superior forces, on the plains of Marengo. 1 Here, after twelve hours 
 of incessant fighting, victory was decided in favor of the French by 
 the stubborn resistance of Desaix, and the happy charge of the gal- 
 lant Kellerman. General Desaix, who had just arrived from Egypt, 
 fell on the field of battle. The result of the victory gave Napoleon 
 the entire command of Italy, and induced the Austrians to pro- 
 pose a suspension of arms, which, in anticipation of a treaty, wag 
 agreed to. 
 
 G.tfhe efforts at negotiation were unsuccessful, as no satisfactory 
 arrangements could be made between England and France, and in the 
 latter part of November the armistice was terminated, and hostili- 
 ties recommenced. In the meantime Malta, which, during more 
 than two years, had been closely blockaded by the British forces, was 
 compelled to surrender, and was permanently annexed to the British 
 dominions. 
 
 7. On the renewal of the war, the Austrian army, eighty thousand 
 strong, under the Archduke John, and the French army, somewhat 
 less in number, under Moreau, were facing each other on the eastern 
 confines of Bavaria. The Austrians advanced, and on the 3d of De- 
 then set up against the wall, among the other dead bodies, which, on account of the cold, decay 
 so slowly that they are often recognized by their friends after tne lapse of years. It is impos- 
 sible to bury the dead, as there is nothing about the hospital Lut naked rocks. Not a tree or 
 bush is to be seen, but everlasting winter reigns in this dreary abode, the highest inhabited, 
 place ir. Europe. 
 
 When the army of Napoleon crossed the St. Bernard, every soldier received from the monks 
 a large ration of bread and cheese, and a draught of wine at the gate of the hospital : a season- 
 able stipply which exhausted the stores of the establishment, but was fully repaid by the Fiist 
 Consul before the close of the campaign. 
 
 The Little St. Bernard, over which Hannibal crossed, is farther west, separating Piedmont 
 from Savoy. The undertaking of the Carthaginian was far more difficult than that of Napoleon. 
 (Map No. XIV.) 
 
 1. Marengo is a small village of Northern Italy, in an extensive plais forty-thr* miles soatlx 
 west from Milan. (Map No. XII.)
 
 CHAP. VI.] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 479 
 
 cembcr brought on the famous battle of Hohenlinden, 1 in which they 
 were completely overthrown, and driven back with great slaughter. 
 Moreau rapidly pursued the retreating enemy, and penetrated within 
 sixty miles of Vienna, when, at the solicitation of the Austrian gen- 
 eral, an armistice was agreed to on the 25th. In the meantime, in 
 the very heart of winter, the French general Macdonald, at the head 
 of fifteen thousand men, had crossed from Switzerland into the Italian 
 Tyrol, by the famous pass of the Splugen," more difficult than that 
 of St. Bernard. The French forces in Italy now numbered more 
 tl.an a hundred thousand men, and the speedy expulsion of the Aus- 
 trians was anticipated, when an armistice, soon followed by the peace 
 of Luneville, 8 put an end to the contest with Austria. a 
 
 8. In the meantime Napoleon, with consummate policy, was suc- 
 cessfully planning a union of the Northern powers against England ; 
 and on the 16th of December, 1800, a maritime confederacy was 
 signed by Kussia, Sweden, and Denmark, and soon after by Prussia, 
 as an acceding party. This league, aimed principally against Eng- 
 land, was designed to protect the commerce of the Northern powers, 
 on principles similar to the armed neutrality of 1 780 ; but its effect 
 would have been, if fully carried out, to deprive England, in great 
 part, of her naval superiority. The Danish government had previ- 
 ously ordered her armed vessels to resist the search of British cruis- 
 ers ; and the Russian emperor had issued an embargo on all the 
 British ships in his harbors. 
 
 9. England, determined to anticipate her enemies, despatched, as 
 soon as possible, a powerful fleet to the Baltic, under the command of 
 Nelson and Sir Hyde Parker. Passing through the Sound under 
 the fire of the Danish batteries, on the 30th of March the fleet came 
 
 1. Hohenlinden is a village of Bavaria, nineteen miles east from Munich. (Map No. XVII.) 
 Campbell's noble ode, beginning, 
 
 w On Linden, when the sun was low, 
 
 AH bloodless lay the untrodden snow," 
 has rendered the name, at least, of this battle, familiar to almost every school-boy. 
 
 2. The Pass of the Splugen leads over the Alps from the Grisons to the Italian Tyrol, into 
 the valley of the Lake of Como. It was only after the most incredible efforts that Macdonald 
 succeeded in passing his army over the mountain ; and more than a hundred soldiers, and as 
 many horses and mules, were swallowed up in its abysses, and never more heard of. Since 
 1823 there has been a road over the Splugen passable-for wheel carriages. It was built by 
 Austria, at great expense. {Map No. XIV.) 
 
 3. Isuneville, in the former province of Lorraine, is on the road from Paris to Strasbourg, 
 sixteen miles south-east from Nancy. By the treaty concluded here in 1801, and which Francis 
 was obliged to give his assent to, "not only as emperor of Austria, but in the name of the 
 German empire," Belgium and all the left bank of the Rhine were again formally ceded to 
 Francw, and Lombardy was erected into an independent Stf te. (Maps No. XIII. and XVII.) 
 
 a. Feb. 9th, 1901.
 
 480 MODERN HISTORY. [PAKT 1L 
 
 to anchor opposite the harbor of Copenhagen, which was protected 
 
 by an imposing array of forts, men-of-war, fire-ships, and 
 
 floating batteries. On the 2d of April Nelson brought 
 
 his ships into the harbor, where, in a space not exceeding 
 
 a mile and a half in extent, they were received by a tremendous fire 
 
 from more than two thousand cannon. The English replied with 
 
 equal spirit, and after four hours of incessant cannonade the whole 
 
 front line of Danish vessels and floating batteries was silenced, with 
 
 a loss to the Danes, of more than six thousand men. The English 
 
 loss was twelve hundred. Of this battle, Nelson said, " I have been 
 
 in one hundred and five engagements, but that of Copenhagen was 
 
 the most terrible of them all." 
 
 10. While Nelson was preparing to follow up his success by at- 
 tacking the Kussian fleet in the Baltic, news reached him of an event 
 at St. Petersburgh which changed the whole current of Northern 
 policy. A conspiracy of Russian noblemen was formed against the 
 Emperor Paul, who was strangled in his chamber on the night of the 
 24th of March. His son and successor Alexander at once resolved 
 to abandon the confederacy, and to cultivate the friendship of Great 
 Britain. Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia followed his example ; and 
 thus was dissolved, in less than six months after it had been formed, 
 the League of the North, the most formidable confederacy ever 
 arrayed against the maritime power of England. 
 
 11. While these events were transpiring in Europe, the army 
 which Napoleon had left in Egypt, under the command of Kleber, 
 after losing its leader by the hands of an obscure assassin, was 
 doomed to yield to an English force sent out under Sir Ralph Aber- 
 crombie, who fell at the head of his victorious columns on the plains 
 of Alexandria." 1 By the terms of capitulation, the French troopsj 
 to the number of twenty-four thousand, were conveyed to France 
 with their arms, baggage, and artillery. As Malta had previously 
 surrendered to the British, there was now little left to contend for 
 between France and England. To the great joy of both nations 
 preliminaries of peace were signed at London on the 1st of October, 
 and on the 27th of March, 1802, tranquillity was restored through- 
 out Europe by the definitive treaty of Amiens. 1 
 
 12. Napoleon now directed all his energies to the reconstruction 
 
 1. Amiens. (See p. 279.) The definitive treaty of Amiens was concluded March 27th, 1802, 
 between Great Britain, France, Spain, and the Batavian Republic, (Republic of Holland.) 
 a. March 21st, 1801.
 
 CHAP VI] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 4Si 
 
 of society in France, the general improvement of the country, and 
 the consolidation of the power hehad acquired. By a 
 
 , . I"- EVENTS 
 
 general amnesty one hundred thousand emigrants were O F 1802, 
 enabled to return : the Roman Catholic religion was re- THE YEAR 
 stored, to the discontent of the Parisians, but to the great 
 joy of the rural population : a system of public instruction was es 
 tablished under the auspices of the government : to bring back that, 
 gradation of ranks in society that the Revolution had overthrown, 
 the Legion of Honor was instituted, an order of nobility founded on 
 personal merit : great public works were set on foot throughout. 
 France : the collection of the heterogeneous laws of the Monarchy 
 and the Republic into one consistent whole, under the title of the 
 Code Napoleon, was commenced ; an undertaking which has deserved- 
 ly covered the name of Napoleon with glory, and survived all the 
 other achievements of his genius ; and finally, the French nation, as 
 a permanent pledge of their confidence, by an almost unanimous vote, 
 conferred upon their favorite and idol the title and authority of con- 
 sul for life. 
 
 13. In his relations with foreign States the conduct of Napoleon 
 was less honorable. He arbitrarily established a government in 
 Holland, entirely subservient to his will ; and he moulded the 
 northern Italian republics at his pleasure : he interfered in the dis 
 s?nsions of the Swiss cantons to establish a government in harmony 
 with the monarchical institutions which he was introducing in Paris ; 
 and when the Swiss resisted, he sent Ney at the head of twenty thou- 
 sand men to enforce obedience. England remonstrated in vain, and 
 the Swiss, in despair, submitted to the yoke imposed upon them. 
 Napoleon was less successful in an attempt to recover the island of 
 St. Domingo, 1 which had revolted from French authority. Forces 
 
 ]. St. Domingo, or Hayti, called by Columbus Hispaniola, (Little Spain,) is a large island 
 of the West Indies, about fifty miles east of Cuba. It was first colonized by the Spaniards, 
 by whose cruelties the aboriginal inhabitants were soon almost wholly destroyed. Their place 
 was at first supplied by Indians forcibly carried off from the Bahamas, and, at a later period 
 by the importation of vast numbers of negroes from Africa. About the middle of the sb.- 
 Menth century the French obtained footing on ils western coasts, and in 1691 Spain ceded to 
 Franco half the island, and at subsequent periods the possessions of the latter were still farther 
 augmented. From 177G to 1789 the French colony was at the height of its prosperity, but in 
 1791 the negroes, excited by news of the opening revolution in France, broke out in insurrec- 
 tion, and in two months upwards of two thousand whites perished, and large districts of fertile 
 plantations were devastated. While the war was raging, commissioners, sent from France, 
 taking part with the negroes against the planters, proclaimed the freedom of all the blacks who 
 Bhould enrol themselves under the republican standard : a measure equivalent to the instant 
 abolition of slavery throughout the island. The English government, apprehensive of danger 
 to Its West India possessions from the establishment of so great a revolutionary outpost al 
 
 w 31
 
 482 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 to the number of thirty-five thousand men were sent out to reduce 
 the island, but nearly all perished, victims of fatigue, disease, and the 
 perfidy of their own government. 
 
 14. It soon became evident that the peace of Amiens could not 
 be permanent. The encroachments of France upon the feebler Eu- 
 ropean powers, the armed occupation of Holland, the great accumu- 
 lation of troops on the shores of the British Channel, and the evident 
 designs of Napoleon upon Egypt, excited the jealousy of England . 
 and the latter refused to evacuate Malta, Alexandria, and the Cape 
 of Good Hope, in accordance with the late treaty stipulations, until sat- 
 
 iv RENEWAL ^factory explanations should be given by the French gov- 
 
 OF THK ernment. Bitter recriminations followed on both sides, 
 
 WAR, 1803. an(J j n the montu O f jj ay> 18 rj3, the cabinet of London 
 
 issued letters of marque, and an embargo on all French vessels in 
 British ports. Napoleon retaliated by ordering the arrest of all the 
 English then in France between the ages of eighteen and sixty years. 
 
 15. The first military operations of the French were rapid and 
 successful. The electorate of Hanover, 1 a dependency of England, 
 
 the entrance of the Gulf of Mexico, and hoping to take advantage of the confusion prevailing 
 in the island, attempted its reduction, but after an enormous loss of men finally evacuated it in 
 1798. No sooner was the island delivered from external enemies than a frightful civil war en- 
 Biied between the mulattoes and negroes, but the former were overcome, and in December 
 1800 Toussaint Louverture, the able leader of the blacks, was sole master of the French part 
 of the island. Napoleon at first confirmed him in his command as general-in-chief, but finding 
 that he aimed at independent authority, in the winter of 18J1 he sent out a large force to reduco 
 the island to submission. During a truce Toussuint was surprised and carried to France, where 
 he died in April 1803. Hostilities were renewed : in November, ]8U:i, the French, driven into 
 a corner of the island, capitulated to an English squadron ; and in January, 1804, the Haytien 
 chiefs, in the name of the people, renounced all dependence on France. Numerous civil wars 
 and revolutions long continued to distract the island. In 1821 that part of the island originally 
 settled by the Spaniards voluntarily placed itself under the Haytieu government, which still 
 maintains its independence. 
 
 In 1791 St. Domingo was in a most flourishing condition, but its commerce and industry were 
 seriously interrupted by the bloody wars and revolutions which succeeded. Moreover, it was 
 not to be expected that half-civilized negroes, suddenly loosed from bondage, under a burning 
 sun, and without the wants or desires of European?, should exhibit the vigor and industry of 
 the latter. The Haytien government has found it necessary to adopt a " Rural Code," which 
 makes labor compulsory on the poorer classes, who in return share a portion of the produce of 
 the lands of their masters. Nominally free, the blacks remain really enslaved. But the island 
 is beginning to assume a more thriving appearance; the manners and morals of the people, 
 although still bad, are improving ; and something has been done for public instruction. What 
 are to be the final resulls of this experiment of negro emancipation, time only can determine. 
 
 1. Hanover is a lar^e kingdom of north-western Germany, bounded north by the German 
 Ocean and the Elbe, east by Prussia and Brunswick, south by Hesse Cassel and the Prussian 
 department of the Lower Rhine, and west by Holland. A portion of western Hanover is 
 almost divided from the rest by the grand-duchy of Oldenburg. (See Map No. XVII.) Tbi 
 'kingdom is formed out of the duch'M formerly posse used by several families of (he junior 
 .jruiK-h of the house of BrKnwsick. rnesl Augustus, )uke of Brunswick, married Sophia, a
 
 CHAP. VI.] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 483 
 
 v 
 
 was quickly conquered, and in utter disregard of neutral rights the 
 whole of the North of Germany was at once occupied by French 
 troops, while, simultaneously, an army was sent into southern Italy, 
 to take possession of the Neapolitan territories. But these move- 
 ments were insignificant when compared with Napoleon's gigantic 
 preparations ostensibly for the invasion of England. Forts and bat- 
 teries were constructed on every headland 1 and accessible point of the 
 Channel : the number of vessels and small craft assembled along the 
 coast was immense ; and the fleets of France, Holland, and Spain, 
 were to aid in the enterprise. England made the most vigorous 
 preparations for repelling the anticipated invasion, which, however, 
 was not attempted, and perhaps never seriously intended. 
 
 16. The year of the renewal of the war was farther distinguished 
 by an unhappy attempt at rebellion in Ireland, in 
 
 which the leaders, Russell and Emmett, were seized, 
 brought to trial, and executed. Early in the following year, 1 804, a 
 conspiracy against the power of Napoleon was detected, in which the 
 generals Moreau and Pichegru, and the royalist leader Georges, were 
 implicated. Moreau was allowed to leave the country, Pichegru 
 was found strangled in prison, and Georges was executed. Napoleon, 
 either believing, or affecting to believe, that the young Duke D'Enghien, 
 a Bourbon prince then living in the neutral territory of Baden, 1 was 
 concerned in this plot, caused him to be seized and hurried to Vin- 
 cennes, where, after a mock trial, he was shot by the sentence of a 
 court martial : an act which has fixed an indelible stain on the 
 memory of Napoleon, as not the slightest evidence of criminality was 
 brought against the unhappy prince. 
 
 1 7. Owing to the intimate connection that had been formed between 
 the courts of Paris and Madrid, England sent out a fleet in the 
 autumn of 1804, before any declaration of war had been made, to 
 interrupt the homeward bound treasure frigates of Spain ; and theso 
 were captured, a with valuable treasure amounting to more than two 
 
 grand-daughter of James I. of England ; and George Louis, the issue of this marriage, became 
 king of England, with the title of George I., in 1714 ; from which time till 1837, at the death 
 of William IV., both England and Hanover had the same sovereign. On the accession of a 
 female to the throne of Great Britain, the Salic law conferred the crown of Hanover on another 
 branch of the Hanoverian family. During the supremacy of Napoleon, Hanover constituted a 
 part of the kingdom of Westphalia, but was restored to its lawful sovereign in 1813. (Map 
 No. XVIU 
 
 1. The grand-duchy of Baden occupies the south-western angle of Germany, having Switzer- 
 land oc the south* and France and Rhenish Bavaria (the Palatinate) on the west. (Map No. 
 XVII.) 
 
 a. Oct. 4th, 1804.
 
 484 MODERN HISTORY. ^ [PAET IL 
 
 million pounds sterling. The British government was severely cen- 
 sured for this hasty act. Spain now openly joined France, and de- 
 clared war against England. a 
 
 18. On the 18th of May of this year Napoleon was created, by 
 decree of the senate, "Emperor of the French;" and on the 2d of 
 December, 1804, was solemnly crowned by the pope, who had been 
 induced to come to Paris for that purpose. The principal powers 
 
 of Europe, with the exception of Gre^t Britain, recog- 
 nized the new sovereign. On the 2Gth of May of the 
 following year he was formally anointed sovereign of Northern Italy. 
 The iron crown of Charlemagne, which had quietly reposed a thou- 
 sand years, was brought forward to give interest to the ceremony, 
 and Napoleon placed it on his own head, at the same time pronouncing 
 the words, " G-od has given it me : beware of touching it." 
 
 19. The continued usurpations charged upon Napoleon at length 
 induced the Northern Powers to listen to the solicitations of England ; 
 and in the summer of 1805 a new coalition, embracing Kussia, Aus- 
 tria, and Sweden, was formed against France. Prussia, tempted by 
 the glittering prize of Hanover, which Napoleon held out to her, per- 
 sisted in her neutrality, with an evident leaning towards the French 
 interest. The Austrian emperor precipitately commenced the war 
 by invading 1 * the neutral territory of Bavaria ; an act as unjustifiable 
 as any of which he accused Napoleon. The latter seized the oppor- 
 tunity of branding his enemies as aggressors in the contest, and de- 
 clared himself the protector of the liberties of Europe. 
 
 20. In the latter part of September, 1805, the French forces, in 
 eight divisions, and numbering one hundred and eighty thousand men, 
 were on the banks of the Rhine, preparing to carry the war into 
 Austria. The advance of Napoleon was rapid, and everywhere the 
 enemy were driven before him. On the 20th of October, Napoleon, 
 having surrounded the Austrian general Mack at Ulm, 1 compelled 
 him to surrender his whole force of twenty thousand men. On the 
 very next day, however, the English fleet, commanded by Admiral 
 Nelson, gained a great naval victory off Cape Trafalgar, 8 over the 
 
 1 Ulm is an eastern frontier town of Wirtemberg, on the western bank of the Danube, ser- 
 enty-six miles north-west from Munich. Formerly a free city, it was attached to Bavaria ia 
 1803, and in 1810 to Wirtemberg. (Map No. XVII. ) 
 
 2. Cape Trafalgar is a promontory of the south-western coast of Spain, twenty-five miles 
 forth-west of the fortress of Gibraltar. In the great naval battle of Oct. 21st, 1805, the Bug- 
 jh, under Nelson, having twenty-seven sail of the line and three frigate^, were opposed by th 
 
 a. Dec. 12th, 1804. b. Sept. 9th. 1805.
 
 . VT.] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 485 
 
 combined fleets of France and Spain ; but it was dearly purchased 
 by the death of tae hero. On the 13th of November Napoleon en- 
 tered Vienna, and on the 2d of December he gained the great battle 
 of Austerlitz, 1 the most glorious of all his victories,* which resulted 
 in the total overthrow of the combined Russian and Austrian armies, 
 and enabled the victor to dictate peace on his own terms.** The em- 
 peror of Russia, who was not a party to the treaty, withdrew hia 
 troops into his own territories : the king of Prussia received Hanover 
 as a reward of his neutrality ; and Great Britain alone remained at 
 open war with France. 
 
 21. While the English now prosecuted the war with vigor on the 
 ocean, humbled the Mahratta 9 powers in India, subdued the Dutch 
 colony of the Cape, and took Buenos Ayres 8 from the Spaniards, Na- 
 poleon rapidly extended his supremacy over the continent 
 
 of Europe. In February, 1806, he sent an army to take 
 possession of Naples, because the king, instigated by his queen, an Aus- 
 trian princess, had received an army of Russians and English into his 
 capital. The king of Naples fled to Sicily, and Napoleon conferred 
 the vacant crown upon his brother Joseph. Napoleon next placed 
 his brother Louis on the throne of Holland : he erected various dis- 
 tricts in Germany and Italy into dukedoms, which he bestowed on 
 his principal marshals : while fourteen princes in the south and west' 
 of Germany were induced to form the Confederation 6 of the Rhine, 
 and place themselves under the protection of France. By this latter 
 stroke of policy on the part of Napoleon, a population of sixteen 
 millions was cut off from the Germanic dominion of Austria. 
 
 22. In the negotiations which Napoleon was at this time carrying 
 on with England, propositions were made for the restoration of Han- 
 over to that power, although it had recently been given to Prussia. It 
 
 French and Spanish fleet of thirty-three sail of the line and seven frigates. Nelson, who was 
 mortally wounded in the action, lived only to be made aware of the deduction of the enemy's 
 fleet. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 1. JJusterlitz (ows'-ter-litz) is a small town of Moravia, thirteen miles southwest of Bruno 
 the capital. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. The Mahrattas were an extens' ,'e Hindoo nation in the western part of southern Hindostan 
 The various tribes of which the nation consisted were first united into a monarchy about the 
 middle of the seventeenth century. 
 
 3. Buenos Ayres (in Spanish bwa-noce-i-res,) is a large city of South America, capital of the 
 republic of La Plata. In 1811) began the revolutionary movements that ended in 1he emanci- 
 pation of Buenos Ayres and t ic States of La Plata froir Spain. The declaration of indepen- 
 dence was made on the 9th of July, 1816. 
 
 a. Loss of the allies thirty thousand, in killed, wounded, and taken prisoners. Loss of the 
 French twelve thousand. 
 
 b. Treaty cf Presburg, D;c. 27tn, 1805. c. July J2th.
 
 486 MODERN HISTORY [P A R7 IL 
 
 was moreover suspected that Napoleon had offered to win the favor 
 of Russia at the expense of his Prussian ally. These, and other 
 causes, aroused the indignation of the Prussians; and the Prussian 
 monarch openly joined the coalition against Napoleon before his own 
 arrangements were completed, or his allies could yield him any assist- 
 ance. Both England and Russia had promised him their coopera- 
 tion. 
 
 23. With his usual promptitude Napoleon put his troops in motion, 
 and on the 8th of October reached the advanced Prussian outposts,. 
 On the 14th he routed the Prussians with terrible slaughter in the 
 battle of Jena, 1 and on the same day Marshal Davoust gained the 
 battle of Auerstadt," in which the Duke of Brunswick was mortally 
 wounded. On these two fields the loss of the Prussians was nearly 
 twenty thousand in killed and wounded, besides nearly as many 
 prisoners. The total loss of the French was fourteen thousand. In 
 a single day the strength of the Prussian monarchy was prostrated. 
 Napoleon rapidly followed up his victories, and on the 25th his 
 vanguard, under Marshal Davoust, entered Berlin, only a fortnight 
 after the commencement of hostilities. 
 
 24. Encouraged by his successes Napoleon issued a series of edicts 
 from Berlin, declaring the British islands in a state of blockade, and 
 excluding British manufactures from all the continental ports. He 
 then pursued the Russians into Poland : on the 30th of November his 
 
 troops entered Warsaw without resistance ; but on the 
 26th of December his advanced forces received a check 
 in the severe battle of Pultusk. On the 8th of February, 1 807, a 
 sanguinary battle was fought at Eylau, 3 in which each side lost 
 twenty thousand men, and both claimed the victory. In some minor 
 engagements the allies had the advantage, but these were more than 
 counterbalanced by the siege and fall of the important fortress of 
 Dantzic, 4 which had a garrison of seventeen thousand men, and waa 
 defended by nine Hundred cannon. 
 
 1. Jena is a town of central Germany, in the grand-duchy of Saxe Weimar, on the west bank 
 of the river Salle, forty-three miles south-west from Leipsic. The battle was fought between 
 the towns of Jena and Weimar. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. rfuerstadt (ow'-er-stadt) is a small village of Prussian Saxony, six miles west of Naumberg, 
 and about twenty miles north of the battle-ground of Jena. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. Eylau (i-low) is a village in Prussia proper, or East Prussia, twenty-eight miles south 
 from Konigsberg. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 4. Danfiic is a n important commercial city, seaport, and fortress, of the province of West 
 Prussia, on the w astern bank of the Vistula, about three miles from its mouth. Dnntzic sur- 
 rendered to the French May 27th 1807. (Map No. XVII.)
 
 CHAP. VI.] NINETEENTH CENTURY 437 
 
 25. At length, on the 14th of June, Napoleon fought the great 
 and decisive battle of Friedland, 1 and the broken remains of the 
 Russian army fell back upon the Niemen." An armistice \vas now- 
 agreed to : on the 25th of June the emperors of France and Russia 
 met for the first time, with great pomp and ceremony, on a raft in 
 the middle of the Nieinen, and on the 7th of July signed the treaty 
 of Tilsit. 3 All sacrifices were made at the expense of the Prussian 
 monarch, who received back only about one-half of his dominions. 
 The elector of Saxony, the ally of France, was rewarded with that 
 portion of the Prussian territory, which, prior to the first partition 
 in 1772, formed part of the kingdom of Poland : this portion was 
 now erected into the grand-duchy of Warsaw. Out of another por- 
 tion -was formed the kingdom of Westphalia, 4 which was bestowed 
 upon Jerome Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon ; and Russia agreed 
 to aid the French emperor in his designs against British commerce. 
 
 26. Soon after the treaty of Tilsit it became evident to England 
 that Napoleon would leave no means untried to humble that powei 
 on the ocean, and it was believed that, with the connivance of Russia, 
 he was making arrangements with Denmark and Portugal for the 
 conversion of their fleets to his purposes. England, menaced with 
 an attack from the combined navies of Europe, but resolving to an- 
 ticipate the blow, sent a powerful squadron against Denmark, with 
 an imperious demand for the instant surrender of the Danish fleet 
 and naval stores, to.be held as pledges until the conclusion of the 
 war. A refusal to comply with this summons was followed by a four 
 days' bombardment of Copenhagen, and the final surrender of the 
 fleet. Denmark, though deprived of her navy, resented the hostility 
 of England by throwing herself, without reserve, into the arms of 
 France. The navy of Portugal was saved from falling into the 
 power of France, by sailing, at the instigation of the British, to Rio 
 
 1. Friedland (freed' land) is a town of East Prussia, on the western bank of the river Alle 
 (al'-leh) twenty-eight miles south-east from Konigsberg, and eighteen north-east of Eylau. 
 (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. The river .Yiemen (Polish nyem'en) rises in the Prussian province of Grodno, and, passing 
 through the north-eastern extremity of Prussia, enters a gulf of the Baltic by two channels 
 tweaty-two miles apart, and each about Ihirly miles below Tilsit. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. Tilsit is a town of East Prussia, on the southern bank of the Niemen, sixty miles north- 
 east of Konigsberg. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 4. West}>halia is a name, 1st, originally given, in the Middle Ages, to a large part of Germany : 
 2d. to a ducliy forming a part of the great duchy of Saxony : 3d, to one of the circles of the 
 German empire: 4th, to the kingdom of Westphalia, created by Napoleon: 5th, to the present 
 Prussian province of Westphalia, created in 1815. Most of the present province was unbraced 
 in each of these divisions. See alsc Note, p 300. (Jllap No. XVII.)
 
 488 MODERN HISTORY. [PAKI IL 
 
 Janeiro, 1 the capital of the Portuguese colony of Brazil." Napoleon 
 had already announced, 11 in one of his imperial edicts., that " the 
 House of Braganza had ceased to reign.'' and had sent an army under 
 Junot to occupy Portugal. On the 27th of November, the Portu- 
 guese fleet, bearing the prince regent, the queen, and court, sailed 
 for Brazil ; and on the 30th the French took possession of Lisbon. 
 
 27. The designs of Napoleon for the dethronement of the Penin- 
 sular monarchs had been approved by Alexander in the conferences 
 of Tilsit ; and when Napoleon returned to Paris he set on foot a 
 series of intrigues at Madrid, which soon gave him an opportunity 
 of interfering in the domestic affairs of the Spanish nation, his recent 
 ally. Charles IV. of Spain, a weak monarch, was the dupe of his 
 faithless wife, and of his unprincipled minister Godoy. The latter, 
 
 secured in the French interest by the pretended gift of a 
 principality formed out of dismembered Portugal, al- 
 lowed the French troops under Murat to enter Spain ; and by fraud 
 and false pretences the frontier fortresses were soon in the hands of 
 the invaders. Too late Godoy found himself the dupe of his own 
 treachery. Charles, intimidated by the difficulties of his situation, 
 resigned b the crown to his son Ferdinand, but, by French intrigues, 
 was soon after induced to disavow his abdication, while at the same 
 time Ferdinand was led to expect a recognition of his royal title from 
 the emperor Napoleon. The deluded prince and his father were both 
 enticed to Bayonne, where they met Napoleon, who soon compelled 
 both to abdicate, and gave the crown to his brother Joseph, who had 
 been summoned frOm the kingdom of Naples to become king of Spain. 
 The Neapolitan kingdom was bestowed upon Murat as a reward for 
 his military services. 
 
 28. Although many of the Spanish nobility tamely acquiesced in 
 this foreign usurpation of the sovereignty of the kingdoui, yet the 
 great bulk of the nation rose in arms : Ferdinand, although a prisoner 
 in France, was proclaimed king : a national junta, or council, was 
 
 1. Rio Janeiro, the capital of Brazil, is the most important commercial city and seaport of 
 South America. Population about two hundred thousand, of whom about half are whites, and 
 the rest mostly negro slaves. 
 
 2. Prior to 1808 Brazil was merely a Portuguese colony, but on the arrival of the prince 
 regent and his court, accompanied by a large body of emigrants, January 25th, 1808, it was 
 raised to a kingdom. In 1822 Brazil was declared a kingdom independent of the crown of 
 Portugal. The empire of Brazil, second only in extBnt to the giant empires of China and 
 Russia, embraces nearly the half of the South American continent ; but its population whites, 
 negroes, aud Indians is less than six millions, of whom only about one million are whites. 
 
 a. Nov. 13th, 1W7. b. March 20th, 1803.
 
 CHAP. VL] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 489 
 
 chosen to direct the affairs of the government ; and the English at 
 once sent large supplies of arras and ammunition to their new allies, 
 while Napoleon was preparing an overwhelming force to sustain his 
 usurpation. A new direction was thus given to affairs, and for a 
 time the European war centered in the Spanish Peninsula. 
 
 29. In the first contests with the invaders the Spaniards were 
 generally successful. A French squadron in the Bay of Cadiz, pre- 
 vented from escaping by the presence of an English fleet, was forced 
 to surrender : a Marshal Moncey, at the head of eight thousand men, 
 was repulsed in an attack b on the city of Valencia : Saragossa, de- 
 fended by the heroic Palafox, sustained a siege of sixty-three 
 days ; c and, although reduced to a heap of ruins, drove the French 
 troops from its walls : Cor' dova was indeed takeu d and plundered 
 by the French marshal Dupout, yet that officer himself was soon after 
 compelled to surrender at Baylen, 1 with eight thousand men, to the 
 patriot general Castanos. This latter event occurred on the 20th 
 of July, the very day on which Joseph Bonaparte made his tri- 
 umphal entry into Madrid. But the new king himself was soon 
 obliged to flee, and the French forces were driven beyond the Ebro." 
 
 30. In the meantime the spirit of resistance had extended to Por- 
 tugal : a junta had been established at Oporto 3 to conduct the gov 
 ernment : British troops were sent to aid the insurgents, and on the 
 21st of August Marshal Junot was defeated at Viniiera, 4 by Sir' 
 Arthur Wellesley. This battle was followed by the convention of 
 Cintra,* which led to the evacuation of Portugal by the French 
 forces. 
 
 31. Great was the mortification of Napoleon at this inauspicious 
 beginning of the Peninsular war, and he deemed it necessary to take 
 
 1. Baylen is a town of Spain, in the province of Jaen, twenty-two miles north from the city 
 of Jaen. It commands the road leading from Castile into Andalusia. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. The Ebro (anciently Jberus) flows through the north-eastern part of Spain, and is the only 
 great river of the peninsula that falls into the Mediterranean. Before the second Punic war 
 It formed the boundary between the Roman and Carthaginian territories, and in the time of 
 Charlemagne, between the Moorish and Christian dominions. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 3. Oporto, an important commerci.il city and seaport of Portugal, is on the north bank of the 
 Douro, two miles frc m its mouth, and one hundred and seventy-four miles north-east from 
 Lisbon. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 4. Vimiera is a small town of the Portuguese province of Estremadura, about thirty miles 
 north-west from Lisbon. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 5. Cintra is a small town of Portugal, twelve miles north-west from Lisbon. By the con- 
 rention signed here Aug. 22d, 180f, the French forces were to be conveyed to I'rance with their 
 krms, artillery, and property. This convention was exceedingly unpopular in England. (Map 
 No. XIII.) 
 
 a. June 14th. b. June 28th. c. June 14th, to Aug. 17th. d. June 8th. 
 
 W*
 
 490 MODERN HISTORY. [PACT IL 
 
 the field in psrson. Collecting his troops with the greatest rapidity, 
 m the early part of November he was in the north of Spain at the 
 head of one hundred and eighty thousand men. He at once com 
 municated his own energy to the operations of the army : the Span- 
 iards were severely defeated at Reynosa, a Burgos, b and Tudela ; cl and 
 on the 4th of December, Napoleon forced an entrance into the capital. 
 The British troops, who were marching to the assistance of the Span- 
 iards, were driven back upon Corunna, 2 and being there attacked d 
 while making preparations to embark, they compelled 
 the enemy to retire, but their brave commander, Sir 
 John Moore, was mortally wounded. On the following day the 
 British abandoned the shores of Spain, and the possession of the 
 country seemed assured to the French emperor. 
 
 32. A short time before the battle of Corunna Napoleon received 
 despatches 6 which induced him to return immediately to Paris. The 
 Austrian emperor, humbled, but not subdued, and stimulated by the 
 warlike spirit of his subjects, once more resolved to try the hazards 
 of war, while the best troops of Napoleon were occupied in the 
 Spanish Peninsula. On the 8th of April large bodies of Austrian 
 troops crossed the frontiers of Bohemia, of the Tyrol, and of Italy, 
 and soon involved in great danger the dispersed divisions of Napo- 
 leon's army. On the 17th of the same month Napoleon arrived and 
 'took the command in person. Baffling the Austrian generals by the 
 rapidity of his movements, he speedily concentrated his divisions, 
 and in four days of combats and manoeuvres, from the 19th to the 
 
 t. Reynosa, Burgos, and Tudela. (See Map No. XIII.) Reynosa is forty-seven miles north- 
 west from Burgos. Tudela is on the Ebro, one hundred and ten miles east from Burgos. 
 Burgos is one Hundred and thirty-four miles north of Madrid. At Reynosa Blake was defeated 
 by the French under Marshal Victor: at Burgos the Spanish count de Belvidere was over- 
 thrown by Marshal Soult : and at Tudela Palafox and Castaiios were beaten by Marshal Lannes. 
 2. Corunna is a city and seaport of Spain, at the north-western extremity of the kingdom. 
 Sir John Moore was struck down by a cannon ball as he was animating a regiment to the 
 charge, " Wrapped by his attendants in his military cloak, he was laid in a grave hastily 
 formed on the ramparts of Corunna, where a monument was soon after constructed over hi 
 uncofflned remains by the generosity of the French marshal Ney. Not a word was spoken as 
 the melancholy interment by torch light took place : silently they laid him in his grave, while 
 the distant cannon of the battle fired the funeral honors to his memory." Alison. 
 
 This touching scene has been vividly described in one of the most beautiful pieces of 
 poetry in the English language, beginning 
 
 " Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note, 
 As his corpse to the ramparts we hurried; 
 Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot 
 O'er the grave where our hero we buried " 
 
 B. NOT. 10th and llth. b. Nov. 10th. c. Nov. 21st 
 
 d. Jan. 16th, 1309. e. Jan. 1st, 1809.
 
 CHAP. VI] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 491 
 
 22d inclusive, he completed the ruin of the Austrian army. On 
 the last of these days he defeated the Archduke Charles at Eekmuhl, 1 
 and compelled him to recross the Danube. Rapidly following up his 
 victories, he entered Vienna on the 13th of May, and although worsted 
 in the battle of Aspern 2 on the 21st and 22d, on the 5th of July he 
 gained a triumph at Wagram, 3 and soon after dictated a peace* by 
 which Austria was compelled to surrender territory containing three 
 and a-half millions of inhabitants. 
 
 33. During the war with Austria, the brave Tyrolese had seized 
 the opportunity to raise the standard of revolt ; and it was not until 
 two powerful French armies had been sent into their country that 
 they were subdued. The British government also sent a fleet, and 
 an army of forty thousand men, to make a diversion against Napo- 
 leon on the coast of Holland ; but the expedition proved a failure. " 
 The war still continued in the Spanish Peninsula, and Sir Arthur 
 Wellesley was sent out by the British government with a large force 
 to cooperate with the Spaniards. In the meantime difficulties had 
 arisen between the French emperor and the Pope Pius VII. : French 
 troops entered Rome; and by a decree b of Napoleon the Papal 
 States were annexed to the French empire. This was followed by 
 a bull of excommunication* 1 against Napoleon, whereupon the pope 
 was seized and conveyed a prisoner into France, where he was de- 
 tained until the spring of 1814. 
 
 34. Near the close of 1809 the announcement was made that Na- 
 poleon was about to obtain a divorce from the Empress Josephine, 
 
 1. Eekmuhl is a small village of Bavaria, thirteen miles south of Ratisbon, and fifty-two 
 miles north-east from Munich. Marshal Davoust, having particularly distinguished himself 
 in the battle of the 22d, was raised by Napoleon to the dignity of prince of Eekmuhl. (Map 
 No. XVH.) 
 
 2. Jlspern is a small Austrian village on the eastern bank of the Danube, opposite the island 
 of Loban, about two miles below Vienna. (Map No. XVII.) After two days' continuous 
 fighting, with vast loss on both sides, Napoleon was obliged to withdraw his troops from the 
 field, and take refuge in the island of Loban. Marshal Lannes, one of Napoleon's ablest gen- 
 erals, Was mortally wounded on the field of Aspern, having both his legs carried away by a 
 cannon ball. Napoleon was deeply affected on beholding the dying Marshal brought off the 
 field on a litter, and extended in the agonies of death. Kneeling beside the rude couch, he 
 wept freely. 
 
 3. Wagram is a small Austrian village eleven miles north-east of Vienna. (Map No. XVII.) 
 In the battle of Wagram each party lost about twenty-five thousand men : few prisoners were 
 taken on either side, and the Austrians retired from the field in good order. The French 
 bulletin, copied by Sir Walter Scott, says the French took twenty thousand prisoners, now 
 admitted to be a grossly erroneous statement. The retreat of the Austrians, however, gave to 
 Napoleon ill the moral advantages of a victory. 
 
 a. Treaty of Vienna, Oct. 14th. b. May 17th, 1809. 
 
 :. See Note, p. d. June llth
 
 492 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 for the purpose of allying himself with one of the royal families of 
 Europe. To Josephine Napoleon was warmly attached ; but reasons 
 of state policy were, in his breast, superior to the dearest affections 
 
 His first marriage having been annulled a by the French 
 xi 1810 
 
 senate, early in 1810 he received the hand of Maria ' 
 
 Louisa of Austria, daughter of the emperor Francis. This mar-, 
 riage, which seemed permanently to establish Napoleon's power, by 
 uniting the lustre of descent with the grandeur of his throne, was 
 one of the principal causes of his final ruin, as it was justly feared 
 by the other European powers that, secured by the Austrian alliance, 
 he would strive to make himself master of Europe. His conduct 
 towards Holland justified this suspicion. Dissatisfied with his broth- 
 er's government of that country, he, soon after, by an imperial de- 
 cree, 1 * incorporated Holland with the French empire. In the same 
 year Bernadotte, one of his generals, was advanced to the throne of 
 Sweden. Napoleon continued his career of aggrandizement in the 
 central parts of Europe, and extended the French limits almost to 
 the frontiers of Russia, thereby exciting the strongest jealousy of 
 the Russian emperor, who renewed his intercourse with the court of 
 London, and began to prepare for that tremendous conflict with 
 France which he saw approaching. 
 
 35. The war still continued in the Spanish peninsula. Sir Arthur 
 Wellesley, who had recently been created Lord Wellington, had the 
 chief command of the English, Spanish, and Portuguese forces. On 
 the 10th of July the Spanish fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo 1 surrend- 
 ered to Marshal Massena, but on the 27th of September Massena 
 was defeated in an attack upon Wellington on the heights of Busaco. 8 
 Wellington, still pursuing his plan of defensive operations, then re- 
 tired to the strongly-fortified lines of Torres Vedras, 3 which defend* 
 
 1. Ciudad Rodrigo (in Spanish the-oo-dad' rod-ree-go, meaning, " the city Rodrigo,") ii a 
 strongly-fortified city of Spain, fifty-five miles south-west from Salamanca. In 1812 this city 
 was retaken by Wellington, an achievement which acquired for him the title of Duke of Ciudad 
 Rodrigo from the Spanish government. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 2. Busaco is a mountain ridge starting from the northern bank of the river Mondego a few 
 lailes north-east of Coimbra, and extending north-west about eight miles. On the summit of 
 the northern portion of this range, around the convent of Busaco, seventeen miles north-east 
 of Coimbra, Wellington collected his whole army of fifty thousand men on the evening of Sep- 
 tember 26th, while Massena, with seventy-two thousand, lay at its foot, determined to force the 
 passage, which he attempted early on the following morning, but without success. (Map No 
 XIII.) 
 
 3. Torres Vedras is a small village on the road from Lisbon to Coimbra, twenty-four mile* 
 north-west of the former. The "Lines of Torres Vedras," constructed by Wellington in 181(1, 
 consisted of three distinct ranges of defence, extending from the river Tagus to tne Atlantic 
 
 a. Dec. loth, 1809. b. July 9th, IfllO.
 
 Lj NINETEENTH CENTURY. 493 
 
 ed the approaches to Lisbon. Massena followed, but in vain en- 
 deavored to find a Aveak spot where he could attack with any prospect 
 of success, and after continuing before the lines more than a month, 
 he broke up his position on the 14th of November, and, for the first 
 time since the accession of Napoleon, the French eagles commenced 
 a final retreat. 
 
 36. The early part of 1811 witnessed the siege of Badajoz 1 by 
 Marshal Soult, and its surrender to the French on the 
 
 lOtli of March ; but this was soon followed by the battle 
 of Albuera, 3 in which the united British and Spanish forces gained 
 an important victory. Many battles were fought during the re- 
 mainder of the year, but they were attended with no important 
 results on either side. 
 
 37. The year 1812 opened with the surrender of the important 
 :ity of Valencia to Marshal Suchet on the 9th of Jan- 
 
 v XI 11. HLfbalAr* 
 
 uary the last of the long series of French triumphs in CAMPAIGN, 
 the peninsula. On the same day Wellington, in another 
 quarter, laid siege to Ciudad Rodrigo ; and the capture 3 - of this place 
 by the British arms was soon followed b by that of Badajoz. Wel- 
 lington, following up his successes, next defeated Marmont c in the 
 battle of Salamanca : 3 the intrusive king Joseph fled from Mad- 
 rid, and on the next day the capital of Spain was in the possess- 
 ion of the British army. The concentration of the French forces 
 again compelled the cautious Wellington to retreat to Portugal ; but 
 early in the following year, 1813, he resumed the offensive, gained 
 
 Ocean, the most advanced, embracing Torres Vedras, being twenty-nine miles in length, the 
 second, about eight miles in the rear of the first, being twenty-four miles, and the third, or 
 " lines of embarcation," in the vicinity of Lisbon, designed to cover the embarcation of the 
 troops if that extremity should become necessary. More than fifty miles of fortifications, bris- 
 tling with six hundred pieces of artillery, and one hundred and fifty forts, flanked with abattia 
 and breastworks, and presenting, in some places, high hills artificially scarped, in others deep 
 ind narrow passes carefully choked, and artificial pools and marshes made by damming up the 
 streams, were defended by seventy thousand disposable men. The French force under .Massena 
 amounted to about the same number. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 1. Badajoz is a city in the west of Spain, on the eastern bank of the Guadiana, about two 
 hundred miles south-west of Madrid, and one hundred and thirty-five miles east of Lisbon. 
 (Map No XIII.) 
 
 2. Albuera is a small town fourteen miles south-east of Badajoz. In the battle of Albuera, 
 fought May 16th, 1811, the allied British, Spanish, and Portuguese troops, were commanded by 
 Marshal Beresford, and the French by Marshal Soult. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 3. Salamanca is a city of Leon in Spain, one hundred and nineteen miles north-west frorr- 
 Madrid. It was known to the Romans by the name of Salamantica. During a long period it 
 was celebrated as being the seat of a University, which, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 
 was attended by from ten thousand to fifteen thousand students. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 a. Jan. 12th. b. April 6th. c. July 22< . d. Aug. llttu
 
 494 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 the decisive battle a of Vittoria, 1 and before the close of the campaign 
 drove the French across the Pyrenees into their own territories. 
 
 38. During these reverses to the French arms, events of greater 
 magnitude than those of the peninsular war were occupying the per- 
 sonal attention of Napoleon. The jealousy of Russia at his repeat- 
 ed encroachments in Central and Northern Europe has already been 
 mentioned : moreover, the commercial interests of Russia, in com- 
 mon with those of the other Northern powers, had been greatly in- 
 jured by the measures of Napoleon for destroying the trade of Eng- 
 land ; but the French emperor refused to abandon his favorite policy, 
 and the angry discussions between the cabinets of St. Petersburg 
 and Versailles led to the assembling of vast armies on both sides, 
 and the commencement of hostilities in the early part of the summer 
 of 1812. Napoleon had driven Sweden to enter into an alliance with 
 Russia and England ; but he arrayed around his standard the im- 
 mense forces of France, Italy, Germany, the Confederation of the 
 Rhine, Poland, and the two monarchies Prussia and Austria. 
 
 39. The " Grand Army" assembled in Poland for the Russian 
 war amounted to the immense aggregate of more than five hundred 
 thousand men, of whom eighty thousand were cavalry the whole 
 supported by thirteen hundred pieces of cannon. Nearly twenty 
 thousand chariots or carts, of all descriptions, followed the army, 
 while the whole number of horses amounted to one hundred and 
 eighty-seven thousand. To oppose this vast army the Russians had 
 collected, at the beginning of the contest, nearly three hundred thou- 
 sand men ; but as the war was carried into the interior their forces 
 increased in numbers until the armies on both sides were nearly 
 equal. 
 
 40. On the 24th of. June, 1812, Napoleon crossed the Niemen at 
 the head of the " Grand Army," and entered upon his ever mem- 
 orable Russian campaign. As the enormous superiority of his forces 
 rendered it hopeless for the Russians to attempt any immediate re- 
 sistance, they gradually fell back before the invaders, wasting the 
 country as they retreated. The wisdom of this course soon became 
 apparent. A terrible tempest soon set in, and the horses in the 
 French army perished by thousands from the combined effects of in- 
 
 1. Viltoria is a town in the Spanish province of Alava, on the road between Burgos and 
 Bayonne, sixty miles north-east from the former. The battle of Vittoria almost innihilated Uw 
 French power Ji Spain. (Map No. XIII.) 
 
 a. June 21st, 1813.
 
 CHAP. VI.] NINETEENTH CEXTURY. 495 
 
 cessant rain and scanty forage : the soldiers sickened in great num- 
 bers ; and before a single shot had been fired twenty -five thousand 
 sick and dying men filled the hospitals ; ten thousand dead horses 
 strewed the road to Wilna, 1 and one hundred and twenty pieces of 
 cannon were abandoned for want of the means of transport. 
 
 41. Still Napoleon pressed onward in several divisions, frequently 
 skirmishing with the enemy, and driving them before him, until he 
 arrived under the fortified walls of Stnolensko, where thirty thousand 
 Russians made a stand to oppose him. A hundred and fifty cannon 
 were brought up to batter the walls, but without effect, for the thick- 
 ness of the ramparts defied the efforts of the artillery. a But the 
 French howitzers set fire to some houses near the ramparts; the 
 flames spread with wonderful rapidity, and during the night which 
 followed the battle a lurid light from the burning city was cast over 
 the French bivouacs, grouped in dense masses for several miles in 
 circumference. At three in the morning a solitary French soldier 
 scaled the walls, and penetrated into the interior ; but he found 
 neither inhabitants nor opponents. The work of destruction had 
 been completed by the voluntary sacrifice of the inhabitants, who had 
 withdrawn with the army, leaving a ruined city, naked walls, and the 
 cannon which mounted them, as the only trophy to the conqueror. 
 
 42. The division of the army led by Napoleon followed the 
 Russians on the road to Moscow, engaging in frequent but indecisive 
 encounters with the rear guard. When the retreating forces had 
 reached the small village of Borodino," their commander, General 
 Kutusoff, resolved to risk a battle, in the hope of saving Moscow 
 On the evening of the 6th of September the two vast armies took their 
 positions facing each other, each numbering more than a hundred 
 and thirty thousand men the Russians having six hundred and forty 
 pieces of cannon, and the French five hundred and ninety. Napoleon 
 sought to stimulate the enthusiasm of his soldiers by recounting to 
 them the glories of Marengo, of Jena, and of Austerlitz ; while a 
 procession of dignified clergy passed through the Russian ranks, be- 
 stowing their blessings upon the kneeling soldiers, and invoking the 
 aid of the God of battles to drive the invader from the land. 
 
 1. Wilna, the former capital of Lithuania, is at the confluence of the rivers Wilenka and 
 Wilna, eastern tributaries of the Niemen, about two hundred and fifty miles north-east from 
 Warsaw. Population nearly forty thousand, of whom more than twenty thousand fxe Jewa. 
 
 MapKo. XVII.) 
 
 2. Borodino (bor-o-dee'-no) is a small village about 'seventy miles south-west from Moscow 
 on the small stream of the Kolotza, a tributary of the Moskwa. 
 
 a Aug. lltn.
 
 496 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET IL 
 
 43. At six o'clock on the morning of the 7th a gun fired from the 
 French lines announced the commencement of the battle : the roar 
 of more than a thousand cannon shook the earth : vast clouds of 
 smoke, shutting out the light of the sun, arose in awful sublimity 
 over the scene ; and two hundred and sixty thousand combatants, led 
 on in the gathering gloom by the light of the cannon and musketry, 
 engaged in the work of death^ The battle raged with desolating fury 
 until night put an end to its horrors. The slaughter was immense. 
 The loss on both sides was nearly equal, amounting, in the aggre 
 gate, to ninety thousand in killed and wounded. The Russian 
 position was eventually carried, but neither side gained a decisive 
 victory. 
 
 44. On the day after the battle the Russians retired, in perfect 
 order, on the great road to Moscow. Preparations were immediately 
 made by the inhabitants for abandoning that city, long revered as 
 the cradle of the empire ; and when, on the 1 4th, Napoleon entered 
 it, no deputation of citizens awaited him to deprecate his hostility, 
 but the dwellings of three hundred thousand persons were as silent 
 as the wilderness. It seemed like a city of the dead. Napoleon 
 took up his residence in the Kremlin, the ancient palace of the czars; 
 but the Russian authorities had determined that their beloved city 
 should not afford a shelter to the invaders. At midnight on the 
 night of the 15th a vast light was seen to illuminate the most distant 
 part of the city ; fires broke out in all directions ; and Moscow soon 
 exhibited a vast ocean of flame agitated by the wind. Nine-tenths 
 of the city were consumed, and Napoleon was driven to seek a tem- 
 porary refuge for his army in the country ; but afterwards returning 
 to the Kremlin, which had escaped the ravages of the fire, he re- 
 mained there until the 19th of October, when, all his proposals of 
 peace being rejected, he was compelled to order a retreat. 
 
 45. The horrors of that retreat, which, during fifty -five days that 
 intervened 'until the recrossing of the Niemen, was almost one con- 
 tinued battle, exceeded anything before known in the annals of war. 
 The exasperated Russians intercepted the retreating army wherever 
 an opportunity offered ; and a cloud of Cossacks, hovering incessant- 
 ly around the wearied columns, gradually wore away their numbers.. 
 But the severities of the Russian winter, which set ii on the 6th of 
 November, were far more destructive of life than the sword of the 
 enemy. The weather, before mild, suddenly changed to intense cold : 
 4he wind howled frightfully through the forests, or swept over the
 
 OH\P. VI J NINETEENTH CENTURY. 497 
 
 plains with resistless fury ; and the snow fell in thick and continued 
 showers, soon confounding all objects, and leaving the army to wander 
 without landmarks through an icy desert. Thousands of the soldiers, 
 falling benumbed with cold, and exhausted, perished miserably in sight 
 of their companions ; and the route of the rear guard of the army was 
 literally choked up by the icy mounds of the dead. In their nightly 
 bivouacs crowds of starving men prepared, around their scanty fires, 
 a miserable meal of rye mixed with snow water and horse flesh ; but 
 numbers never awoke from the slumbers that followed ; and the sites 
 of the night fires were marked by circles of dead bodies, with their 
 feet still resting on the extinguished piles. Clouds of ravens, issuing 
 from the forests, hovered over the dying remains of the soldiers ; 
 while troops of famished dogs, which had followed the army from 
 Moscow, howled in the rear, and often fell upon their victims before 
 life was extinct. The ambition of Napoleon had led the pride and 
 the chivalry of Europe to perish amid the snows of a Russian 
 winter ; and he bitterly felt the taunt of the enemy, " Could the 
 French find no graves in their own land ?" 
 
 46. Napoleon had first thought of remaining in winter quarters at 
 Smolensko ; but the exhausted state of his magazines, and the con- 
 centrating around him of vast forces of the enemy, which threatened 
 soon to overwhelm him, convinced him that a protracted stay was 
 impossible, and on the 14th of November the retreat was renewed 
 Napoleon, in the midst of his still faithful guards, leading the ad- 
 vance, and the heroic Ney bringing up the rear. But the enemy 
 harassed them at every step. During the 16th, 17th, and 18th, in 
 the battles of Krasnoi, 1 Napoleon lost ten thousand killed, twenty 
 thousand taken prisoners, and more than a hundred pieces of cannon 
 fell into the hands of the enemy. The terrible passage of the Bere- 
 sina, a which was purchased by the loss of sixteen thousand prisoners, 
 and twenty-four thousand killed or drowned in the stream, completed 
 the ruin of the Grand Army. All subordination now ceased, and it 
 was with difficulty that Marshal Ney could collect three thousand 
 men on foot to form the rear guard, and protect the helpless multi- 
 tude from the indefatigable Cossacks ; and when at length the few 
 remaining fugitives reached the passage of the Niemen, the rear 
 guard was reduced to thirty men. The veteran marshal, bearing a 
 musket, and still facing the enemy, was the last of the Grand Army 
 
 1. Krasnoi is a small town about thirty miles south-west from Smolensko. (Map No. XVII.) 
 & The Beresi~\a is a western tributary of the Dnieper. See Map No. XVIL 
 
 32
 
 408 MODERN HISTORY. . [PAHI II. 
 
 who left the Russian territory . Napoleon had already abandoned 
 the remnant of his forces, and, setting out in a sledge for Paris, he 
 arrived there at midnight on the 18th of December, even before 
 the news of his terrible reverses had reached the capital. It has 
 been estimated that, in this famous Russian campaign, one hundred 
 and twenty-five thousand men of the army of Napoleon perished in 
 battle ; that one hundred and thirty-two thousand died of fatigue, 
 hunger, and cold ; and that nearly two hundred thousand were taken 
 prisoners. 
 
 47. While these great events were transpiring on the continent of 
 Europe, difficulties arose between the United States of America and 
 Great Britain, which led to the opening of war between those two 
 powers in the summer of 1812. Mexico was at this time passing 
 through the struggles of her first Revolution ; and a feeble war was 
 still maintained between the French and British possessions in the 
 Indian seas ; but these events were of little interest in comparison 
 with that mighty drama which was enacting around the centre of Na- 
 poleon's power, and which was converting nearly all Europe into a 
 field of blood. 
 
 48. Notwithstanding his terrible reverses in the Russian campaign, 
 
 Napoleon found that he still possessed the confidence of 
 the French nation : he at once obtained from the senate 
 a new levy of three hundred and fifty thousand men took the most 
 vigorous measures to repair his losses, and, having arranged his dif- 
 ficulties with the pope, on the 15th of April he left Paris for the 
 theatre of war. In the meantime Prussia and Sweden had joined 
 the alliance against him ; a general insurrection spread over the 
 German States ; Austria wavered ; and already the confederates had 
 advanced as far as the Elbe. On the 2d of May Napoleon gained 
 the battle of Lutzen, and a fortnight later that of Bautzen j 1 but as 
 these were not decisive, on the 4th of July an armistice was agreed 
 to, and a congress met at Prague to consider terms of peace. 
 
 49. As Napoleon would listen to nothing calculated to limit his 
 power, on the expiration of the armistice, on the 10th of August, 
 war was renewed, when the Austrian emperor, abandoning the cause 
 of MJ son-in-law, joined the allies. Napoleon at once commenced a 
 series of vigorous operations against his several foes, and with vari- 
 
 1. Bautzen. (bout-a>n) is a town of Saxony on the -astern bank of the river Spree, thirty-two 
 mil* north-jast f-on> Dresdeu. (Map No. XVII.)
 
 CHAP. VI] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 499 
 
 ous success fought the battles of Culm, 1 Gross-Beren, 3 the Katsbach,' 
 and Dennewitz,* iu which the allies, although not decidedly victorious, 
 were constantly gaining strength. In the first battle of Leipsic, 
 fought on the IGth of October, the result was indecisive, but in the 
 battle of the 1 8th the French were signally defeated, and on the fol- 
 lowing morning began a retrograde movement towards the Rhine. 
 Pressed on all sides by the allies, great numbers were made prisoners 
 during the retreat ; about eighty thousand, left to garrison th 
 Prussian fortresses, surrendered ; the Saxons, Hanoverians, and 
 Hollanders, threw off the French yoke ; and it was at this time that 
 Wellington was completing the expulsion of the French from Spain. 
 50. The year 1814 opened with the invasion of France, on the 
 eastern frontiers, by the Prussian, Russian, and Austrian 
 armies ; while Wellington, having crossed the Pyrenees, 
 laid siege to Bayonne : Bernadotte, the old comrade of Napoleon, 
 but now king of Sweden, was marching against France at the head 
 a hundred thousand men ; and Murat, king of Naples, brother-in-law 
 of the French emperor, eager to secure his crown, entered into a se- 
 cret treaty with Austria for the expulsion of the French from Italy. 
 Never did the military talents of Napoleon shine with greater lustre 
 than at this crisis. During two months, with a greatly inferior force, 
 he repelled the attacks of his enemies, gained many brilliant victo- 
 ries, and electrified all Europe by the rapidity and skill of his move- 
 ments. But the odds were too great against him ; the enemy had 
 crossed the Rhine, and while, by a bold movement, Napoleon threw 
 himself into the rear of the allies, hoping to intimidate them into a 
 retreat, they marched upon Paris, which was compelled to capitulate 
 before he could come to its relief. Two days later the emperor was 
 formally deposed by the senate, and, on the 6th of April, with a 
 trembling hand, he signed an unconditional abdication of the thrones 
 of France and Italy. By a treaty concluded between him and the 
 allies on the llth, Napoleon was promised the sovereignty of the 
 
 1. Culm is a small town in the north of Bohemia, at the foot of the Erze-Gebirg mountains, 
 about fifty miles north-west from Prague. On the 30th of August, 1813, the French under 
 Vandamme were utterly overwhelmed by the allied Austrians, Russians, and Prussians, com- 
 manded by Barclay de Tolly. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Gross-Beren (groce-baren) is a small village a short distance soutn of Berlin, and east 
 Of Potsdam (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. The Katsbach (kats-back) is a western tributary of the Oder, in Silicia. The battle, or 
 several battles of that name, were fought near the eastern bank of that stream, wet of Liegnitz, 
 and fifty-five miles north-west from Breslau. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 4. Dcnncidtz is a small village of Prussian Saxony, seven miles north-east from VVitttmberg 
 {Map No. XVII.)
 
 500 MODERN HISTORY. [PAIT IL 
 
 island of Elba, 1 and a pension of one hundred thousand j ounds per 
 annum. On the 3d of May, Louis XVIII., returning from his long 
 exile, reentered Paris : to conciliate the French people he gave them 
 a constitutional charter, and soon after concluded a formal treaty 
 with the allies, by which the continental dominions of France were 
 restricted to what they had been in 1792. 
 
 51. The final settlement of European affairs had been left to a 
 general congress of the ministers of the allied powers, which assem- 
 bled at Vienna on the 25th of September ; but while the conferences 
 were still pending, the congress was thrown into consternation by the 
 announcement that Napoleon had left Elba. An extensive conspira- 
 cy had been formed throughout France for restoring the 
 fallen emperor, and on the 1st of March, 1815, he landed 
 
 at Frejus, accompanied by only eleven hundred men : everywhere 
 the soldiery received him with enthusiasm : Ney, who had sworn 
 fidelity to the new government, went over to him at the head of a 
 force sent to arrest his progress ; and on the evening of the 20th of 
 March he reentered the French capital, which Louis XVIII. had 
 left early in the morning. With the exception of Augereau, Mar- 
 mont, Macdonald, and a few others, all the officers, civil and military, 
 embraced his cause ; at the end of a month his authority was rees- 
 tablished throughout all France ; and he again found himself at the 
 summit of power, by one of the most remarkable transitions recorded 
 in history. 
 
 52. In vain Napoleon now attempted to open negotiations with 
 the allied powers, and professed an ardent desire for peace ; the allies 
 denounced him as the common enemy of Europe, and refused to re- 
 cognize his authority as emperor of the French people. All Europe 
 was now in arms against the usurper, and it was estimated that, by the 
 middle of summer, six hundred thousand effective men could be as- 
 sembled against him on the French frontiers. But nothing which 
 genius and activity could accomplish was wanting on the part of Na- 
 poleon to meet the coming storm ; and in a country that seemed 
 drained of men and money, he was able, by the 1st of June, to put 
 
 1. Elba, (the (Etholia of the Greeks, and the Iloa or Una of the Romans,) is a mountainous 
 island of the Mediterranean, between the Italian coast and Corsica, six or seven miles from the 
 nearest point of the former, and having an area of about one hundred and fifty square miles. 
 It derives its chief historical interest from its having been the residence and empire of Napo- 
 leon from the 3d of May 1814, to the 26th of February 1815. During this short period a road 
 was opened between the two principal towns, trade revived, and a now era seemed to have 
 dawned upon the island. (Map No. VIII.)
 
 CHAP VL] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 501 
 
 on foot an army of two hundred and twenty thousand veterans, who 
 had served in his former wars. 
 
 53. His policy was to attack the allies in detail, before their forces 
 could be concentrated, and with this view he hastened across the 
 Belgian frontier on the 15th of June, with a force numbering, at that 
 point, one hundred and twenty thousand men. On the 16th he defeated 
 the Prussians, under Blucher, at Ligny, 1 but at the same time Ney was 
 defeated by Wellington at Quatre Bras. 3 The defeat of the Prussians 
 induced Wellington to fall back upon Waterloo, 3 where, at eleven 
 o'clock on the morning of the 18th, he was attacked by Napoleon in 
 person, while, at the same time, large bodies of French and Prussians 
 were engaged at Wavre. 3 On the field of Waterloo the combat 
 raged during the day with terrific fury Napoleon in vain hurling 
 column after column upon the British lines, which withstood his as- 
 saults like a wall of adamant ; and when, at length, at seven in the 
 evening, he brought up the Imperial Guard for a final effort, it was 
 driven back in disorder. At the same time Blucher, coming up with 
 the Prussians, completed the rout of the French army. The broken 
 host fled in all directions, and Napoleon himself, hastening to Paris, waa 
 the herald of his own defeat. Once more the capital capitulated, and 
 was occupied by foreign troops : Napoleon a second time abdicated 
 the throne, and, after vainly attempting to escape to America, sur- 
 rendered himself to a British man-of-war. He was banished by the 
 allies to the island of St. Helena, 6 where he died on the 5th of May, 
 
 1. Ligny is a small village on the small stream of the same name, two or three miles north- 
 east of Fleurus, and about eighteen miles east of south from Waterloo. (Maps Nos. XII. 
 and XV.) 
 
 2. Quatre Bras (kah-tr-brah " four arms,"; is at the meeting of four roads about seventeen 
 miles south from Brussels, and nearly ten miles south from Waterloo. (Maps Nos. XII. 
 and XV.) 
 
 3. Waterloo is a small village or hamlet of Belgium, nine miles south of Brussels, and on the 
 south-western border of the forest of Soignies.' The great road from Brussels leading south to 
 Charleroi passes through Waterloo, about three-quarters of a mile south of which was tha 
 centre of the position of the allies, who occupied the crest of a range of gentle eminences, ex- 
 tending about two miles in length, and crossing the high road at right angles. The French 
 army occupied a corresponding line of ridges nearly parallel, on the opposite side of the valley, 
 and about three-quarters of a mile distant. In the valley between these ridges the " Battle of 
 Waterloo" was fought. (Maps Nos. XII. and XV.) 
 
 4. Wavre is a small village on the western bank of a small stream called the Dyle, nine miles 
 a little south of east from Waterloo, and fifteen miles south-east from Brussels. The river Dyle 
 is not deep, but at the period of the battle it was swollen by the recent heavy rain, and the 
 roads were iu a miry state. (Maps Nos. XII. and XV.) 
 
 5. St. Helena is an island of the Atlantic Ocean, belonging to Great Britain, in fifteen deg. 
 fifteen min. south Int., and twelve hundred miles west from the coast of Benguela in South Af. 
 rica. Length ten and a-half miles, breadth six and a-half miles. It is a rocky island, the inte- 
 rior of which is a plateau about fifteen hundred feet above the level of the sea. The highest
 
 502 MODERN HISTORY. \T?AB.I IL 
 
 1821, during one of the most violent tempests that had ever raged 
 on the island fitting time for the soul of Napoleon to take its de- 
 parture. In his last moments his thoughts wandered to the scenes of 
 his military glory, and his last words were those of command, as he 
 fancied himself at the head of his armies. 
 
 54. After the capitulation of Paris, the tranquilization of France, 
 and the future peace and safety of Europe, received the first atten- 
 tion of the allies. Louis XVIII. following in the rear of their 
 armies, entered the capital on the 8th of July; but the French 
 people felt too deeply the humiliation of defeat to express any joy at 
 his restoration. The mournful tragedy which followed, in the exe- 
 cution of Marshal Ney and Labedoyer'e for high treason in favoring 
 Napoleon's return from Elba, after the undoubted protection which 
 had been guaranteed them by the capitulation of Paris, was a stain 
 upon the character of the allies ; and although Ney's treason was 
 beyond that of any other man, to the end of the world his guilt will 
 be forgotten in the broken faith of his enemies, and the tragic interest 
 and noble heroism of his death. The fate of Murat, king of Naples, 
 was equally mournful, but less unjust. On- Napoleon's landing at 
 Frejus he had made a diversion in his favor by breaking his alliance 
 with Austria, and commencing the war; but the cowardly Neapoli- 
 tans were easily overthrown, and Murat was obliged to seek refuge in 
 France. At the head of a few followers he afterwards made a descent 
 upon the coast of Naples, in the hope of regaining his power ; but 
 being seized, he was tried by a military commission, condemned, and 
 executed. 
 
 55. On the 20th of November, 1815, the second treaty of Paris 
 was concluded between France and the allied powers, by which the 
 French frontier was narrowed to nearly the state in which it stood 
 in 1790 : twenty-eight million pounds sterling were to be paid by 
 France for the expenses of the war, and a larger sum still for the 
 
 mountain summit is two thousand seven hundred and three feet in height. Jamestown, the port, 
 at d residence of the authorities, is the only town. Longwood, the residence of Napoleon, stand* 
 en the plateau, in the middle of an extensive park. After Napoleon's death the house was for 
 some time uninhabited, but was finally converted into a kiud of fanning establishment; and 
 recently, the room in which the conqueror of Austerlitz breathed his last was occupied as a 
 cart-house and stable ! 
 
 Napoleon arrived at St. Helena on the 13th of October, 1815, and there he expired on the 5th 
 of May, 1821. His remains, after having been deposited for nineteen years in a humble gray* 
 near the house, were, in 1840, conveyed with great pomp and ceremony to France, whor*, 
 agreeably to the wish expressed in his lant will, they now repose, in the Hotel des Invalide*, 1 
 Paris.
 
 CHAP VI] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 503 
 
 spoliations which she had inflicted on other powers during her Revo- 
 lution, and for five years her frontier fortresses were to be placed in 
 the hands of her recent enemies ; while the vast treasures of art 
 which adorned the museums of the Louvre the trophies of a hundred 
 victories were to be restored to the States from which they had 
 oeen pillaged by the orders of Napoleon. Mournfully the Parisians 
 parted with these memorials of the glories of the consulate and the 
 empire. The tide of conquest had now set against France herself: 
 her pride was broken her humiliation complete and the iron en- 
 tered into the soul of the nation. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 FROM THE FALL OF NAPOLEON TO THE PRESENT TIME. 
 I. THE PERIOD OF PEACE : 18151820. 
 
 ANALYSIS. [TREATIES OF 1815.] 1. Treaty between Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Eng- 
 land. The " Holy Alliance." General accession to it. 2. Its authorship, objects, and effects. 
 3. Condition of Europe. Continued popular excitement, but change in its objects. 
 
 4. The social contest in ENGLAND. Prosperity of England during the war. 5. Disappointed 
 expectations. Causes of a general revulsion. Scarcity, in 1816. 6. Other contributing causes 
 diminished supply of the precious metals, &c. Demands of the Radicals. 7. Policy of the 
 English government. Reforms granted. Reported conspiracy. 8. Stringent measures of gov- 
 ernment. The meeting at Manchester. [Manchester.] Continued complaints. Government 
 carries all its important measures. 9. The piratical States of Northern Africa. [Barbary.] The 
 United States of America and Algiers. 10. Chastisement of Algiers by an English squadron, in 
 1816. 1]. Importance of these events. Decline of the Ottoman empire. 
 
 12. Situation of FRANCE at the time of the second restoration. Change in public feeling 
 against the lionapartists and Republicans. Punishment of the Revolutionists demanded. 13. 
 Religious and political feuds. Atrocities. 14. Demands, and acts, of the Chamber of Deputies 
 of 1815. Singular position of parties 15. Policy of the king and ministry, and coup d'etat 
 {Koo-da-tah) of Sept. 1816. 16. Effects of the new measures. 
 
 H. REVOLUTIONS IN SPAIN, PORTUGAL, NAPLES, PIEDMONT, GREECE, 
 FRANCE, BELGIUM, AND POLAND: 18201831. 
 
 I. SPAIN. I. Spain from 1815 to 1820. Grant of a constitution in 1820. The party opposed 
 to it. Action taken by the European powers. 2. Interference of the French in 1823. Re 
 mainder of the reign of Ferdinand. Tho course of England and the United States of America. 
 
 II. PORTUGAL. 1. Situation of Portugal. Revolution of 1820. Opposition to, and sup- 
 pression of, the new constitution. Anarchy. 2. Don Pedro. Don Miguel's usurpation. Civil 
 war. Foreign interference, and restoration of tranquillity. 
 
 III. NAPLES. 1. History of the kingdom of Naples previous to 1815. 2. The subsequent rule 
 of Ferdinand. Popular insurrection in July, 1820. Grant of a constitution. Resolution of 
 Russia, Austria, and Prussia, to put down the constitution. [Troppau.] 3. Coi duct of Feriii- 
 nand. [Laybach.] An Austrian army suppresses the Revolution. 
 
 IV. PIBDMONT. 1. Account of the Sardinian monarchy. [Sardinia. Tessino] Feelings and
 
 504 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II 
 
 complaints of the Piedmoatcse. 2. Insurrection in Piedmont, March 1821. Success of the in 
 surgents, and abdication of the king. Austrian interference suppresses the Revolution. 
 
 V. THE GREEK REVOLUTION. 1. History of Greece from 1481 to 18-21. Proclamation of 
 Grecian independence in 1*21. Suppression of the Resolution in Northern Greece. [Islam- 
 ism. Trieste.] 2. Beginning and spread of the Revolution in the Morea. Proclamation of 
 the Messenian senate. [Kalamatia.] Aid extended to the Greeks. 3. Rage, and cruelties, of the 
 Turks. EQ'octs produced. 4. Events on the Asiatic coast, in Caudia, Cypress, Rhodes, &.C. 
 Successes and retaliatory measures of the Greeks. [.Monembusia. Navariuo. Tripolitza.] 5. 
 Defeat of the Turks at Thermopylae The peninsula of Cassandra laid waste by them. [Cas- 
 sandra.] The Turks driven from the country to the cities. 
 
 [1822.] 6. Acts of the Greek congress. [Epidaurus.] Dissensions and difficulties among 
 the Greeks. 7. Principal military events of 1822. [Scio. Napoli di Romania.] 8. Destruction 
 of Scio. Events in Southern Macedonia. [Salonica.] 8. Events in, Western Greece. The 
 Greek fire-ships. [Tenedos.] Great loss of Turkish vessels. Taking of Xapidi di Romania. 
 
 [1823.] 9. Events of the war during the year 1823. [Missolonghi.] The poet Lord Byron. 
 [1824.] 10. The Turks besiege Negropont, subdue Candia, reduce Ipsara, and attack Samos. 
 The Egyptian fleet. [1825-6.] 11. Successes of Ibrahim Pacha in the Morea. Siege and fall 
 of Missolonghi. [Salona.] Fate of the inhabitants of Missolonghi. 12. Danger apprehended 
 from the successes of Ibrahim Pacha, and treaty of London, July lt-27. 13. Allied squadron 
 sent to the archipelago. Battle of Navarino. Rage of the Porte. 14. French and English army 
 sent to the Morea, 1828. War between Russia and Turkey. [Pruth.] Convention with Ibra- 
 him Pacha. Successes of the Greeks. Retaliatory measures of the sultan. 15. Protocol of the 
 allies, Jan. 1827. [CycIades.J Successes of the Russians, and peace of Adrianople. [Balkan 
 Mts.] 16. Unsettled condition of the country and its subsequent history. 
 
 VI. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1830. 1. Beginning of the reign of Charles X. Principles 
 of his government and opposition of the people. The Poliguac ministry, 1S29. 2. The royal 
 speech at the opening of the Chambers in 1830. Effects. Reply of the Chambers. Dissolution 
 of the Chambers. 3. War with Algiers. 1. Continued excitement in France. Result of the 
 elections. Course pursued by the ministry. The three ordinances of July 26th. Accompany 
 Ing report of the ministers. 5. The course pursued by the public journals. Excitemen. 
 throughout Paris. Apathy of the king and ministers. 6. Events of the 27th. Marrnont. 
 Arming of the people. 7. On the 28th the riot assumes the aspect of a Revolution. The con 
 test during the day. Its results. 8. Renewal of the contest on the third day. Defection of 
 the troops of the line, and success of the revolution. Installalion of a provisional government. 
 Louis Phillippe elected king. 9. Alarm of the continental sovereigns. The emperor of Rus&ia. 
 Charles X. and his ministers. 
 
 VII. BELGIUM. 1. Effects of the French Revolution upon Europe. Revolution in Belgium. 
 2. Vain attempts at reconciliation. Declaration of Belgian independence. Protocol of the 
 five great European powers. Selection of a king. [Saxe-Coburg, Gotha.] Siege and sur- 
 render of Antwerp. Prosperity of Belgium. 
 
 VIII. POLISH REVOLUTION. 1. Disposition made of Poland by the congress of Vienna. Al- 
 exander's arbitrary government of Poland. 2. The government of Poland under the emperor 
 Nicholas. Character of Constantino. Effect of his barbarities. Secret societies. [Volhynia.] 
 3. Revolutionary outbreak at Warsaw, Nov. 1630. A general rising in Warsaw. The pro- 
 visional government. 4, Fruitless attempts to negotiate. Russian and Polish forces. Opening 
 events of the war. 5. Night attacks and rout of the Russians. [Bug River.] Conduct of 
 Prussia and Austria. 6. Battle of Ostrolenka. [Minsk. Ostrolenka.] Death of Diebitsch and 
 Constantine. Conspiracy at Warsaw. 7. Dissensions among the Poles. Fall of Warsaw and 
 end of the war. Fate of the Polish generals, soldiers, and nobility. Result. 
 
 III. ENGLISH REFORMS. FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848. REVOLUTIONS IN THE 
 
 GERMAN STATES, PRUSSIA, AND AUSTRIA. REVOLUTIONS IN ITALY. 
 
 HUNGARIAN WAR. USURPATION OF LOUIS NAPOLEON. 
 
 L ENGLISH REFORMS. 1. England from 1820 to 1830. Reforms obtained in 1828 and 1829. 
 Resignation of the Wellington ministry, 1830. The whig ministry of Earl Grey. Lord Russell's 
 Reform bill -.lost in the Commons. 2. Dissolution of Parliament. Result of the new elections. 
 Second defea of the Reform bill, 1831. Pop 'lar resentment, and riots. [Derby. Bristol.] 3.
 
 CHAP. VI] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 505 
 
 Thin defeat ol ;be Reform bill. 1832. Resignation of ministers. Causes of their reinstatement. 
 Final passage tf -he Reform bill. 4. Important effects of this measure. More intimate union 
 with France. Prosperity of England under the change. 5. Accession of Victoria to the throne, 
 1837 ; and her marriage to Prince Albert, 1H40. 
 
 II. FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848. 1. Most, important events of the reign of Louis Phillippe. 
 2. Lafayette's instrumentality in his election. Anomalous and difficult position of Louis 
 Phillippe. The temporary success of his government. 3. Discontent of the middle and lower 
 classes. 4. The political reform banquets of 1847-8. The contemplated banquet for the 2Cd 
 of Feb., 1848, forbidden by the government. Measures taken by the opposition deputies. 5. 
 Announcement of the postponement of the banquet. Popular assemblage dispersed. Dis- 
 turbances in the evening of the 22d. 6. Renewed disturbances on the morning of the 28-.1. 
 Demands of the National Guards acceded to. The people fired upon in the evening, 7. 
 A Thiers' ministry organized. Proclamation on the morning of the 24th, and withdrawal 
 of the troops. Disarming of the troops, abdication of the king, pillage of the palace, and flight 
 of the king and ministers. 8. Meeting of the Chamber of Deputies. Adoption of a Republic. 
 9. M. Lamartine. General adhesion to the new government. 10. The Moderate and the 
 lied Republicans. Their respective principles. Demands upon the government. 11. Ani- 
 mosities of the two sections of the Republican parly. Popular demonstrations. The April 
 elections. The executive committee. 12. Insurrection of the 15th of May. Its suppression. 
 13. Precautionary measures of the government. Insurrection of June suppressed after a 
 bloody contest. 14. Cavaignac chief executive. Treatment of the insurgent prisoners. Adop- 
 tion, and character of, the new constitution. 
 
 III. REVOLUTIONS IN THE GERMAN STATES, PRUSSIA, AND AUSTRIA. 1. Effects of the recent 
 French Revolution upon the German States. Events in Baden. 2. Events at Cologne, 
 Munich, and Ilesse-Cassel. [Hanau. Hesse-Cassel.] 3. Convention at Heidelberg. [Heidel- 
 berg.] Action of the Frankfort diet. Course of Frederick William of Prussia. Saxony and 
 Hanover. Revolt of Sleswick and Holstein. 
 
 4. Excitement in Vienna, caused by the Revolution in Paris. [Galicia. Metternich.] 5. 
 Opening of the diet of Lower Austria. Commotions and bloodshed. 6. Concessions of the 
 government, and triumph of the people. 7. Efforts of government to fulfil its promises. Dif- 
 ficulties that intervened. Rule of the mob. Flight, and return, of the emperor. [Inspruck.] 
 8. Demands of the Bohemians. A Slavic Congress. Bombardment of Prague, and termination 
 of the Bohemian Revolution. 9. Hungary at this period. Revolt of the Croats, who are sup- 
 ported by Austria. [Hungary. Croatia.] Second Revolution in Vienna. Flight of the em 
 peror. [Olmutz.] Siege and surrender of Vienna. 10. The Hungarian army during the siege 
 11. Character of the second Revolution in Vienna. Reaction in the popular mind, and 
 triumph of despotism. 
 
 IV. REVOLUTIONS IN ITALY. 1. Austrian influence and interference in Italian affairs since 
 'Jie fall of Napoleon. [Modena. Parma. Papal-States.] 2. Election of Pope Pius IX. in 
 1846. His character and acts. Austria interferes. [Ferrara.] A general rising against Aus- 
 tria. Withdrawal of Austrian troops. [Bologna. Lucca.] 3. Austrian force in Lombardy. 
 General insurrection throughout Austrian Italy. Charles Albert of Sardinia espouses the 
 cause of Italian nationality. Final triumph of the Austrians under Radetsky. An armistice. 
 4. Renewal of the war second triumph of Radetsky, and abdication of Charles Albert. 5. 
 Blockade and fall of Venice. 6. Revolution in Naples. [Kingdom of Naples.] War with, 
 and final reduction of, the Sicilians. [Palermo.] 7. Difficulties of the pope. 8. His growing 
 nni>opularity and flight. [Gaeta.] The Roman Republic instituted. 9. The pope's appeal for 
 aid bow responded to. 10. Reduction of Rome by the French army. Return of the pope. 
 The change in him and his people. 
 
 V. HUNGARIAN WAR. 1. Immediate cause of the second Revolution in Vienna. Hungarian 
 and Croatian war. 2. Historical account of the Magyars. [Theiss.] Character of the Hun- 
 garian government. 3. Repeated acknowledgments of its independence. 4. Ferdinand the 
 Fifth. His means of influence, and Austrian control over the government of the Hungarians. 
 The two parties in Hungary. 5. Concessions to Hungary in March, 1848. [Pesth.] 6. Anarchy 
 and misrule in Hungary. 7. A more alarming danger to Hungary. Her population. Revolt 
 of Croatia. [Slavonians.] The Serbian revolt. [Serbs.] Actual beginning of the war on the 
 part of Hungary. [CarlowUz. Peterwardein. The Banat.] Austria openly supports the 
 Croatian rebelon. 8. Vction of the Hungarian Diet. Defeat of Jellachich near Pesth. 9. 
 
 X
 
 506 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 Character, and situation, of Ferdinand, who abdicates the throne. The Hungarian Diet refusei 
 to acknowledge his successor. Failure of the attempt at negotiations. 10. Defection of several 
 of the Hungarian leaders, but general adherence to Kossuth and the country. Want of arms 
 but partially supplied. Hungarian force. II. Austrian plan of invasion. Austrians enter 
 Pesth, Jan. 3849, and the government retires to Debreczin. Concentration of the Hungarian 
 forces. General Hem. [Debreczin. Comorn. Eperies. Bukowina.] 12. Loss of Esseck. 
 Bern is at first repulsed. His final successes. [Esseck. Wallachs. Hermanstadt. Cronstadt. 
 Temeswar.] 13. Dembinski. Operations in the valley of the Theiss. [Szegedin. Maros. Ka- 
 polna, &c.] Battles of Kapolna. 14. Gorgey. His victories over the Austrians. [Tapiobieske. 
 Godollo. Waitzen. Nagy Surlo,] Siege of Buda. [Buda.] 15. Constitution for the . \usirian 
 empire. Declaration of Hungarian independence. Kossuth governor of Hungary. 10. Aus- 
 trian and Russian preparations for a second campaign. The Hungarian forces. 17. Invasion 
 of Hungary in June. [Presburg. Bartfeld.] 13. Gradual concentration of the enemies of 
 Hungary. [Hegyes.j Barbarities of Haynau. 19. Gorgey's retreat to Arad. [Onod. Tokay. 
 Arad.] Want of concert among the Hungarian generals. 20. Retreat of Dembinski. Defeat 
 at Temeswar, and breaking up of the southern Hungarian array. Gorgey's failure to support 
 Dembinski. His suspected fidelity. Supreme power conferred upon him. vJl. Gorgey's treason, 
 and surrender of his army, Aug. 13th, 1849. 22. Previous successes of the Hungarians in the 
 vicinity of Comorn. [Raab.] Surrender of Comorn, Sept. 29th. 23. Fate of Kossulh, Bern, 
 Dembinski, &c. [Widdin.] 04. The closing tragedy of the Hungarian war. Fate of the in- 
 ferior officers, Hungarian soldiers, &c. 
 
 VI. USURPATION OF Louis NA.POLKON. 1. Election of a chief magistrate in France in 1848. 
 The six candidates. Cavaignac, and Louis Napoleon. Election of the latter. Inauguration 
 and oath of office. 2. History of Louis Napoleon down to the period of his election. [Fortress 
 of Ham.] 3. His declaration of principles. Jealousy of him. Parties in the Assembly. 4. 
 Want of confidence between the President and Assembly. Acts of the Assembly. 5. Pro- 
 posed revision of the constitution. 6. President's message of November 1851. Increasing ani- 
 mosity of the Assembly against the President. 7. An approaching crisis, how anticipated by 
 Louis Napoleon. Circumstances of the coup d'etat of December 2d. 8. Meeting, and arrest, 
 of members of the Assembly. The public press. Decree for an election. Insurrection of De 
 cember 4th, suppressed by the military. 9. Result of the elections of December. The new 
 constitution. Louis Napoleon President for ten years. Assumes the title of emperor. 
 
 L THE PERIOD OF PEACE: 18151820. 
 
 1. On the day of the signing of the treaty of Paris, another was 
 concluded between Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Eng- 
 l an d> designed as a measure of security for the allied 
 powers, and declaring that Napoleon Bonaparte cmd his 
 family should be forever excluded from the throne of France. On 
 the same day a third treaty, of notorious celebrity, called " The 
 Holy Alliance," was subscribed by the emperors of Russia and 
 Austria, and the king of Prussia, who bound themselves, " in con- 
 formity with the principles of Holy Scripture, to lend each other 
 every aid, assistance, and succor, on every occasion." This treaty 
 was ere long acceded to by nearly all the continental powers as parties 
 to the compact, although the ruling prince of England declined sign- 
 ing it, on the ground that the English const'tution prevented him 
 from becoming a party to any convention that was not countersigned 
 by a responsible minister.
 
 CHAP. VI.] NINETEENTH CENTURY. SO? 
 
 2. The terms of the Holy Alliance were drawn by the young 
 Russian emperor Alexander, whose enthusiastic benevolence prompt- 
 ed him to devise a plan of a common international law that should 
 substitute the peaceful reign of the Gospel in place of the rude em- 
 pire of the sword. But the law of the Holy Alliance, although be- 
 neficent in its origin, was to be interpreted by absolute monarchs : as 
 it was evident that its only active principle would be the maintenance 
 of despotic power, under the mask of piety and religion, it was justly 
 regarded with dread and jealousy by the liberal party throughout 
 Europe, and was in reality made a convenient pretext for enforcing 
 the doctrine of passive obedience, and resisting all efforts for the es- 
 tablishment of constitutional freedom. 
 
 3. The treaties of 1815 both closed the ascendency of imperial 
 France in Europe, and terminated, for a time at least, the revolution- 
 ary movements in the civilized world. Twenty-five years of war had 
 exhausted the treasures of Europe, and covered her soil with mourn- 
 ing, and never before had the sweets of repose been so eagerly cov- 
 eted by rulers and people. But although the nations had tired of 
 the mingled horrors and glories of military strife, the excitement oc- 
 casioned by the revolutionary wars continued, and, for want of other 
 channels of action, seized hold of the social passions of the masses : 
 military gave place to democratic ambition the old ante-revolution- 
 ary contest between despotism and democracy revived, to be fol- 
 lowed by other revolutions still, until one or the other principle shall 
 triumph until, in the language of Napoleon, Europe shall become 
 either Cossack or Republican. 
 
 4. In England, the social contest, wearing a milder aspect than 
 on the continent, displayed itself in the legal strife for government 
 relief and parliamentary reforms. During a long and 
 expensive war, England had enjoyed extraordinary do- ENG "^ ND 
 mestic prosperity: since the year 1792 her population 
 
 had increased more than four millions, notwithstanding the absorp- 
 tion of five hundred thousand men in the army and navy : the ex- 
 ports, imports, and tonnage, of the kingdom, had more than doubled 
 since the war began ; and although the public debt had grown to an 
 enormous amount, agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, had 
 gone on increasing, during the whole struggle, in an unparallel )d ratio. 
 
 5. It was confidently anticipated, not only by the ardent and en 
 thusiastic, but also by the prudent and sagacious, that when the 
 enormous expenses of the war establishment should be removed, and
 
 508 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET It 
 
 peace had thrown open the ports of all Europe to the enterprise of 
 British merchants, the tide of national prosperity would rise still 
 higher and higher ; but never were hopes more cruelly disappointed. 
 Exports, to an enormous amount, being suddenly thrown into countries 
 impoverished by war, glutted the foreign market ; and. the consign- 
 ments, in most instances, were sold for little more than half their 
 original cost spreading ruin throughout the commercial interests. 
 Moreover, the opening of the European and American ports for the 
 the supplies of grain, glutted the home market of England ; and 
 prices of every species of agricultural produce soon fell to two-thirds 
 of what they had been during the closing scenes of the war : a season 
 of unusual scarcity, in 1816, threatening a famine, increased the 
 general distress, which, like a pall of gloom, enshrouded the whole 
 kingdom. 
 
 6. Other causes, in addition to those originating in the mere 
 transition from a state of war to one of peace, doubtless contributed 
 to the general revulsion in business, among which may be mentioned, 
 as the most prominent, the greatly diminished supply of the precious 
 metals from South America, a owing to the unsettled state of that 
 country then occupied with revolutionary wars, and the rapid con- 
 traction of the paper currency of Great Britain, in anticipation of a 
 speedy return to specie payments. But the English Radical or Re- 
 publican party attributed the difficulties to excessive taxation and the 
 measures of a corrupt government ; and a vehement outcry was 
 raised for parliamentary reform, and retrenchment in all branches of 
 public expenditure. 
 
 7. The English government, wiser than the continental powers, 
 has ever had the prudence to make seasonable concessions to 
 reasonable popular demands, before the spark of discontent has been 
 blown into the blaze of revolution ; and now, after a spirited contest, 
 a heavy property tax, that had been patiently submitted to as a 
 necessary war measure, was repealed, amid the universal transports 
 of the people : the remission of other taxes followed, and, in one 
 year, a reduction of thirty-five million pounds sterling was made from 
 the national expenditure, although strongly opposed by the ministry. 
 Still the distress continued ; the popular feeling against the govern- 
 ment increased; numerous secret political societies were organized 
 among the disaffected ; and early in the following year (1817) a com- 
 
 a. From 1815 to 1810 the amount of gold and silver coin produced from the mines of South 
 America fell from about seven million pounds sterling to five and a half millio/i pounds.
 
 . VL] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 509 
 
 mittee of parliament reported that ail extensive conspiracy existed, 
 chiefly in the great towns and manufacturing districts, for the over- 
 throw of the monarchy, and the establishment of a republic in its stead. 
 
 8. In consequence of the information, greatly exaggerated, which 
 had been communicated to the committee, ministers were enabled to 
 carry through parliament bills for suspending the privileges of the 
 writ of habeas corpus, and for suppressing tumultuous meetings, de- 
 bating societies, and all unlawful organizations. Armed with ex- 
 tensive powers, government took the most active measures for putting 
 a stop to the threatened insurrection : a few mobs were suppressed ; 
 many persons were arrested on a charge of high treason ; and several 
 were convicted, and suffered death. In 1819 a large and peaceable 
 meeting at Manchester, 1 assembled to discuss the question of parlia- 
 mentary reforms, was charged by the military, and many lives in- 
 humanly sacrificed ; but all attempts in parliament for an inquiry 
 into the conduct of the Manchester magistrates, under whose orders 
 the military had acted, were defeated. Although the people still 
 justly complained of grievous burdens of taxation, and unequal rep 
 resentation in parliament, those evils were not so oppressive as to in- 
 duce them to incur the hazards of revolution ; and government, 
 having yielded to the point where danger was past, was sufficiently 
 strong to carry all its important measures. 
 
 9. An event of general interest that occurred soon after the close 
 of the European war was the merited chastisement of the piratical 
 State of Algiers. During a long period the Barbary" powers had 
 carried on a piratical warfare against those nations that were not suf- 
 ficiently powerful to prevent or punish their depredations. From 
 the year 1795 to 1812 the United States of America had preserved 
 peace with Algiers by the payment of an annual tribute ; but in the 
 latter year the Dey, believing that the war with England would render 
 the Americans unable to protect their commerce in the Mediterranean, 
 commenced a piractical warfare against all American vessels that fell 
 in the way of his cruisers. In the month of June 1815, an Ameri- 
 can squadron, under the command of Commodore Decatur, being sent 
 
 1. Manchester, the great centre of the cotton manufacture of Great Britain, and the greatest 
 manufacturing town in the world, is situated on the Irwell, an affluent of the Mersey, thirty-one 
 miles east from Liverpool. {Map No. XVI.) 
 
 2. Earbary is the name that has been usually given, in modern times, to that portion of 
 northern Africa bordering on the Mediterranean, and lying between the western frontier of 
 Egypt and the Atlantic. The namo Ba.rla.ry is derived from that of its ancient inhabita* ts,the 
 Berbers,
 
 510 MODERN HISTORt. * [PART IL 
 
 to the Mediterranean, after capturing several Algerine vessels, com- 
 pelled Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis, to release all American prisoners 
 in their possession, pay large sums of money, and relinquish all future 
 claims to tribute from the United States. 
 
 10. In the following year, the continued piracies of the Algerines 
 upon some of the smaller European States that claimed the protec 
 tion of England, induced the British government to send out a pow- 
 erful squadron, with directions to obtain from the Dey unqualified 
 abolition of Christian slavery, or, in case of refusal, to destroy, if 
 possible, the nest of pirates whose tolerance had so long been a dis- 
 grace to Christendom. On the 27th of August the British fleet, 
 commanded by Lord Exmouth, appeared before Algiers, whose for- 
 tifications, admirably constructed, and of the hardest stone, were de- 
 fended by nearly five hundred cannon and forty thousand men. No 
 answer being returned to the demands of the British government, 
 the attack was commenced in the afternoon of the same day ; and 
 although the defence was most spirited, by ten in the evening all the 
 fortifications that defended the approaches by sea were totally 
 ruined, while the shot and shells had carried destruction and death 
 throughout the city. On the following morning the Dey submitted, 
 agreeing to abolish Christian slavery forever, and immediately re- 
 storing twelve hundred captives to their country and friends. The 
 total number liberated at Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis, was more than 
 three thousand. 
 
 1 1. The humiliation of the piratical Barbary powers by the Ameri- 
 cans in 1815, and the battle of Algiers in the following year, were 
 events highly important to the general interests of humanity, not 
 only from their immediate results, but as the beginning of the de- 
 cisive ascendency of the Christian over the Mohammedan world. 
 Former triumphs of the cross over the crescent had averted subju- 
 gation from Christendom, or had been obliterated by subsequent dis- 
 asters ; but since the battle of Algiers, the followers of the prophet 
 have seen, and mournfully submitted to, their destiny ; Algiers has 
 since become a province of a Christian State ; and the Ottoman eo. 
 pire is only saved from dissolution by the jealousies of its Christian 
 neighbors. 
 
 12. The situation of France at the time of tho second restoration 
 
 of Louis XVIII., with a vast foreign army quartered 
 
 m. FRANCE. , , , , 
 
 upon her people, an empty treasury, and an unsettled 
 government, was gloomy in the extreme. "With a vacillation peculiar
 
 CHAP. VL] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 511 
 
 to the French people, public opinion had already turned against the 
 Bonapartists and the Republicans, who were regarded as the authors 
 of all the evils under which the nation suffered ; and the king soon 
 found himself seriously embarrassed by the ardor of his own friends. 
 Punishment of the Revolutionists, and a restoration of the powers 
 and privileges of the nobility and the clergy, were violently demand- 
 ed by the Royalists; but, fortunately, the extreme danger of any 
 violent reactionary movement was too manifest to permit the king 
 to intrust the government to the ultraists of his own party. 
 
 13. Had it not been for the presence of a large foreign army, 
 France might again have been doomed to the horrors of civil war : 
 as it was, the party feuds of centuries between the Roman Catholics 
 and P'-otestants, revived by the imbittered feelings of the moment, 
 broke forth anew in the south of France : the Royalists demanded 
 vengeance against the Republicans ; and political zeal combined with 
 religious enthusiasm to arouse the worst passions of the people, and 
 incited to numerous massacres, which recalled the memory of the 
 bloodiest period of the Revolution. Although the king denounced 
 these atrocities, and called upon the magistrates to bring the guilty 
 parties to justice, the latter were screened from arrest, or, if taken, 
 were acquitted in face of the clearest evidence of their guilt. 
 
 1 4. The Chamber of Deputies, at its first meeting, in the autumn 
 of 1815, urgently demanded of the king that those "who had im 
 perilled alike the throne and the nation should be delivered over to 
 the just severity of the tribunals :" stringent laws were passed punish- 
 ing seditious words ; courts martial were established for trying politi- 
 cal offences ; and when the king, after the execution of Nej T , La- 
 bedoyere, and a few others, proposed a general amnesty, the chamber 
 had prepared, and demanded the proscription of, a list of twelve hun- 
 dred additional victims ; and in order to secure the amnesty the king 
 was compelled, against his inclination for moderate measures, to assent 
 to an amendment providing for the perpetual banishment of all those 
 who had voted for the death of his brother, the unfortunate Louis 
 XVI. France presented the singular spectacle of an ascendant Roy- 
 alist party arrayed in opposition to the king, who, in order to check 
 their undue zeal, was compelled to ally himself with the Republi- 
 cans, the natural enemies of his cause. 
 
 15. Although the ultra Royalists controlled the action of the. leg- 
 islature, there was still a powerful party of ultra Revolutionists 
 among the peop .e ; and it was the policy of the king and his ministry
 
 512 MODERN HISTORY [PAET IL 
 
 to guard against the danger of the ascendency of either, by conform 
 ing to the general principles which the Revolution had impressed 
 upon the nation. As the legislative body continually thwarted the 
 government, it was determined to alter the composition of the repre- 
 sentatives by a coup cVetat, or arbitrary ordinance of the king ; and 
 accordingly, on the 5th of September, 1816, a royal ordinance was 
 published, which dissolved the Chamber of Deputies, arbitrarily di- 
 minished the number of representatives, and secured the election of 
 a majority of those who were attached to the measures of the minis- 
 terial party. 
 
 16. The royal ordinance of September, although conferring the 
 right of suffrage upon only one hundred thousand out of thirty mil- 
 lions of the population of .France, was far more democratic than ac- 
 corded with the wishes of the Royalists, who feared that the new 
 representatives, chosen mostly from the middle classes of landed pro- 
 prietors, would incline towards a republican form of government, under 
 which they might most effectually secure their own rights, and divide 
 among themselves the honors and emoluments of office. a And such, 
 indeed, was the result. The electoral law proclaimed by the king, 
 and the subsequent creation b of a large body of peers taken from 
 the Liberals and Bonapartists, soon placed the control of govern- 
 ment in the hands of the democratic party, which was naturally an- 
 tagonistic to the power which had given it influence ; but the Royal- 
 ists, who at the restoration had seemed the ruling party, were unwilling 
 to resign the control of the government ; and the struggle continued 
 to increase in violence between them and the Liberals, until it finally 
 resulted in the Revolution of 1830, and the overthrow of the mon- 
 archy. 
 
 II. REVOLUTIONS IN SPAIN, PORTUGAL, NAPLES, PIEDMONT, 
 GREECE, FRANCE, BELGIUM, AND POLAND: 
 
 18201831. 
 
 I. SPAIN. 1. During the period of general peace, from 1815 to 
 1820, Spain, under the rule of the restored Ferdinand, was in a state 
 of constant political agitation ; and in 1 820 an insurrection of the 
 soldiery compelled the king to restore to his subjects the free and 
 almost republican constitution of 1812. The Republicans^ however, 
 
 c. By the ordinance of Sept. 5th, 1816, the right of suffrage was established on whe basis of 
 the payment of three hundred francs direct taxes to the government. 
 b. March 5th, 1819.
 
 CHAP. VI.] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 513 
 
 who thus obtained the direction of the government, showed little 
 wisdom or moderation ; and a large party, directed by the monks 
 and friars, and supported by the lower ranks of the populace, was 
 formed for the restoration of the monarchy. Several of the European 
 powers, in a congress held at Verona, adopted a resolution to sup- 
 port the authority of the king in opposition to the constitution which 
 he had granted ; but England stood aloof, and to France was in- 
 trusted the execution of the odious measure of suppressing democratic 
 principles in Spain. 
 
 2. Accordingly, early in the year 1823, a French army of a hun- 
 dred thousand men, under the command of the Duke d'Angoulcme, 
 entered Spain : the patriots made but a feeble resistance, and the 
 king was soon restored to absolute authority, on the ruins of the con- 
 stitution. The remainder of the reign of Ferdinand, who died in 
 1833, was characterized by the complete suppression of all liberal 
 principles in politics and religion, and the revival of the ancient 
 abuses which had so long disgraced the Spanish monarchy. England 
 and the United States severely censured the interference of France 
 in the domestic affairs of the Spanish nation, and showed their sym- 
 pathy with the cause of the oppressed by recognizing, at as early a 
 period as possible, the independence of the Spanish South Americau 
 republics, which had recently renounced their allegiance to Spain. 
 
 II. PORTUGAL. 1. The adjoining kingdom of Portugal was a 
 prey to similar commotions. The emigration of the king and court 
 to Brazil during the peninsular war, has already been mentioned, 
 (p. 488.) The nation being dissatisfied with the continued residency 
 of the court in Brazil, which in fact made Portugal a dependency 
 of the latter, and desiring some fundamental changes in the frame 
 of government, at length in August 1820 a revolution broke out, and 
 a free constitution was soon after established, having for its basis the 
 abolition of privileges, the legal equality of all classes, the freedom 
 of the press, and the formation of a representative body in the na- 
 tional legislature. This constitution, being violently opposed by the 
 clergy and privileged classes, who formed what was called the apos- 
 tolical party, at the head of whom was Don Miguel, the king's 
 younger son, was suppressed in 1823, and a state of anarchy con- 
 tinued until the death of the king in 1 826, when the crown fell to 
 Don Pedro, emperor of Brazil. 
 
 2. Don Pedro, however, resigned his right in favor of his infant 
 daughter Donna Maria, at the same time granting to Portugal a 
 x* 33
 
 514 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET II. 
 
 constitutional charter, and appointing his brother Don Miguel regent. 
 Although the latter took an oath of fidelity to the charter, he soon 
 began openly to aspire to the throne, and by means of an artful 
 priesthood caused himself, in 1829, to be proclaimed sovereign of 
 Portugal, while the charter was denounced as inconsistent with the 
 purity of the Roman faith. The friends of the charter, aided by 
 Don Pedro, who repaired to Europe to assert the rights of his 
 daughter, organized a resistance, and after a sanguinary struggle, 
 during which they were once driven into exile, they obtained the 
 promise of support from France, Spain, and England, who in 1834 
 entered into a convention to expel the younger brother from the Por- 
 tuguese territories. Soon after, Don Miguel gave up his pretensions, 
 and the young queen was placed upon the throne, since which time 
 the country has remained comparatively tranquil. 
 
 III. NAPLES. 1. The kingdom of Naples, embracing Sicily and 
 southern Italy, nearly identical with the Magna G-raecia of antiquity, 
 had been erected into an independent monarchy in 1734, under the 
 Infante Don Carlos of Spain, who took the name of Charles III. It 
 continued under a succession of tyrannical or imbecile rulers of the 
 Bourbon dynasty till 1798 : the Italian portion of the kingdom was 
 then overrun by the French, who held it from 1803 till 1815, when 
 it reverted to its former sovereign Ferdinand, who, during the French 
 rule, had maintained his court in the Sicilian part of his kingdom. 
 
 2. Under the rule of Ferdinand, popular education was wholly 
 neglected ; the roads, bridges, and other public works which the 
 French had either planned or executed, were left unfinished, or fell 
 into decay ; and yet the people were oppressively taxed, and a repre- 
 sentative government was denied them. At length, on the 2d of 
 July, 1820, the growing discontents of the people broke out in open 
 insurrection, and a remonstrance was sent to the government de- 
 manding a representative constitution. One based on the Spanish 
 constitution of 1812 was immediately granted, and the Neapolitan 
 parliament was opened on the 1st of October following; but on the 
 same month a convention of the three crowned heads who formed the 
 Holy Alliance, attended by ministers from most of the other Eu- 
 ropean powers, met at Troppau j 1 and it was there resolved by the 
 
 1. Troppau, the capital of Austrian Silesia, is situated on the Oppa, a tributary of the Oder, 
 thirty-seven miles north-east from Olmutz. From 20th October to 20th November, 1820, it waa 
 the place of meeting of the diploma ic congress, which afterwards removed to Laybach. (Map 
 No. XVII.)
 
 CHAP. VI] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 515 
 
 sovereigns of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, to put down the Neapoli- 
 tan constitution I y force of arms. 
 
 3. France approved the measure, but the British cabinet remained 
 neutral. The old king Ferdinand, who had been invited to visit the 
 sovereigns at Lajbach, 1 was easily convinced that his promises had 
 been extorted, and therefore were not binding ; and Austrian troops 
 immediately prepared to execute the resolutions of the congress, 
 while the aid of a Russian army was promised, if necessary. An 
 Austrian force of forty-three thousand men entered the Neapolitan 
 territory, heralded by a proclamation from Ferdinand, calling his 
 subjects to receive the invaders as friends. A few slight skirmishes 
 took place, but the country was quickly overrun ; foreign troops gar- 
 risoned the fortresses ; the king's promise of complete amnesty was 
 forgotten ; and courts martial and executions closed the brief drama 
 of the Neapolitan Revolution. 
 
 IV. PIEDMONT. 1. Piedmont is the principal province of the Sar- 
 dinian monarchy ; 2 and the latter, first recognized as a separate king 
 dom by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, comprises the whole of north- 
 ern Italy west of the Tessino, 3 together with the island of Sardinia 
 in the Mediterranean. The Piedmontese, never considering them- 
 selves properly as Italians, had been proud of their annexation to 
 France under the rule of Napoleon ; and on the restoration of the 
 monarchy they were the first of the Sardinian people to exhibit the 
 liberal principles of the French Revolutionists, and to complain of 
 the oppressive exactions imposed upon them by the government. 
 
 2. Scarcely had the Neapolitan Revolution been suppressed, when 
 an insurrection, beginning with the military, broke out in Piedmont. 
 On the 10th of March, 1821, several regiments of troops simulta- 
 neously mutinied ; and it is believed that the malcontents were se- 
 cretly favored by Charles Albert, a kinsman of the royal family, who 
 
 1. Laytach, the capital of Austrian niyria, (which latter embraces the duchies of Carinthia 
 and Camiola,) is situated on a navigable stream, a tributary of the Save, fifty-foui miles north 
 east from Trieste. It is celebrated in diplomatic history for the congress hel< here in 1821. 
 (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Sardinia (Kingdom of) embraces the territory of Piedmont, Genoa, and Nice, and the 
 adjaceut duchy of Savoy on the west side of the Alps, together with the island of Sardinia. 
 Savoy, which was governed by its own counts as early as the tenth century, was the nucleus 
 of lli.3 monarchy. Genoa was annexed to the SaKlinian crown at the peace of 1815. (Map 
 No. XVII.) 
 
 3. The Tessini or Ticino (anciently Ticinus, see p. 158,) having its sources in Mount St. 
 Gothard, flows svuthward, and after traversing the Lago Maggiore a its entire length, and 
 forming the boundary between Lombardy and Piedmont, falls into the Po at Pavia. (Map No. 
 XVII)
 
 516 MODERN HISTORY. 
 
 afterwards became king of Sardinia. The seizure of he citadel of 
 Turin, on the 12th, was followed, on the 13th, by the abdication of 
 the king Victor Emanuel, in favor of his absent brother Charles 
 Felix, and the appointment of Prince Albert as regent. While ef- 
 forts were made to organize a government, an Austrian army was 
 assembled in Lombardy to put down the Revolution : the new king 
 repudiated the acts of the regent, who threw himself on the Aus- 
 trians for protection : on the 8th of April the insurgents were over- 
 thrown in battle ; and on the 1 Oth the combined royal and Austrian 
 troops were in possession of the whole country. In Piedmont, as in 
 Naples, Austrian interference, ever exerted on the side of tyranny, 
 suppressed every germ of constitutional freedom. 
 
 V. THE GREEK REVOLUTION. 1. In the year 1481, Greece, the 
 early and favored seat of art, science, and literature, was conquered 
 by the Turks, after a sanguinary contest of more than forty years. 
 The Venetians, however, were not disposed to allow its new masters 
 quiet possession of the country ; and during the sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries it was the theatre of obstinate wars between them 
 and the Turks, which continued till 1718, when the Turks were con- 
 firmed in their conquest by treaty. Although the Turks and Greeks 
 never became one nation, and the relation of conquerors and con- 
 quered never ceased, yet the Turkish rule was quietly 
 submitted to until 1821, when, according to previous ar- 
 rangements, on the 7th of March Alexander Ypsilanti, a Greek, and 
 then a major-general in the Russian army, proclaimed, from Moldavia, 
 the independence of Greece, at the same time assuring his country- 
 men of the aid of Russia in the approaching contest. But the 
 Russian emperor declined intervention ; the Porte took the most 
 rigorous measures against the Greeks, and called upon all Mussulmen 
 to arm against the rebels for the protection of Islamism : l the wildest 
 fanaticism raged in Constantinople, where hundreds of the resident 
 Greeks were remorselessly murdered ; and in Moldavia the bloody 
 struggle was terminated with the annihilation of the patriot army, 
 and the flight of Ypsilanti to Trieste, 2 where the Austrian govern- 
 ment seized and imprisoned him. 
 
 1. Islamism, from the Arabic word sa/ama, u j> be free, safe, or devoted to God," is tie tens 
 which the followers of Mahomet apply to their religion. The term " iMohainmedism'' it aa 
 objectionable as the term "popery." 
 
 2. Trieste, a seaport town of Austrian Illyria, is near the north-eastern extremity of the 
 Adriatic, seventy-three miles north-east from Venice. During the mi Idle ages Trieste was the 
 capital of a small republic. (Map No. XVII.)
 
 OHAP. VI] NINETEENTH CENTURI 517 
 
 2. In southern Greece no cruelties could quench the fire of liberty j 
 and sixteen days after the proclamation of Ypsilanti the Revolution 
 of the Morea began at Suda, a large village in the northern part of 
 Achaia, where eighty Turks were made prisoners. The revolution 
 rapidly spread over the Morea and the islands of the .ZEgean : the 
 ancient names were revived ; and on the 6th of April the Messenian 
 senate, assembled at Kalamatia, 1 proclaimed that Greece had shaken 
 
 . off the Turkish yoke to save the Christian faith, and restore the 
 ancient character of the country. From that time the Greeks found 
 friends wherever free principles were cherished ; and from England 
 and the United States large contributions of clothing and provisions 
 were forwarded to relieve the sufferings inflicted by the wanton 
 atrocities of the Turks. 
 
 3. The rage of the Turks was particularly directed against the 
 Greek clergy, many of whom were murdered, among them the aged 
 patriarchs of Constantinople and Adrianople ; and several hundred 
 of, the Greek churches were torn down, while the Christian ambassa- 
 dors of neutral powers in vain remonstrated with the Turkish divan. 
 These excesses, and the massacre of those whom the Turks took in 
 arms, showed to the Greeks that the struggle in which they had en- 
 gaged was one of life and death ; and it is not surprising, therefore, 
 that the Greeks often retaliated when the power was in their hands. 
 
 4. During the summer months the Turks committed great depre- 
 dations among the Greek towns on the coast of Asia Minor : the in- 
 habitants of the island of Candia, who had taken no part in the insur- 
 rection, were disarmed, and the archbishops, and many of the priests, 
 executed : in Cyprus, where also there had been no appearances of 
 insurrection, the Greeks were disarmed, and their archbishop and 
 other prelates murdered. The most barbarous atrocities were also 
 committed at Rhodes, and other islands of the Grecian Archipelago, 
 where the villages were burned, and the country desolated. But 
 when in August the Greeks .captured the strong Turkish fortresses 
 of Monembasia" and Navarino, 3 and in October that of Tripolitza/ 
 
 1. Kilamalia is near the head of the Messenian Gulf, now called the Gulf of Kalmatia. 1U 
 i.nclent name was Calamat. It is e;ist of the Paraisus rh'er now the Pamitza. (Map No. I.) 
 
 2. The fortress of Monembasia is in the vicinity of the ancient Epidaurus, on tt e eastern coast 
 of Laconia, forty-three miles south-east from Sparta. (Map No. I.) 
 
 3. Navarino is on the western coast of Messenia, near the ancient Pylus. It stands on the 
 south side of a fine semi-circular bay of the same name, cut off from the sea by t e long narro 
 Inland of Sphagia anciently Sphactcria. (Map No. I.) 
 
 4. Tripolitza, a town of modern origin, and, under the Turks, the capital of the Morea, U 
 about fi ?e miles north of Tegea* in the ancient Arcadia. Its name Tripolit-.a, " the three
 
 518 MODERN HISTORY [PART II 
 
 they iDok a teirible revenge upon their enemies ; and in Tripolitza 
 alone eight thousand Turks were put to death. 
 
 5. On the 5th and 6th of September the Greek general Ulysses 
 defeated, near the pass of Thermopylae, a large Turkish army which 
 had advanced from Macedonia ; but on the other hand the peninsula 
 of Cassandra 1 was taken by the Turks, when three thousand Greeks 
 were put to the sword ; women and children were carried into slave- 
 ry, and the flourishing peninsula converted into a desert waste. The 
 Athenian Acropolis was garrisoned by the Turks, and the inhabitants 
 of Athens fled to Salamis for safety ; but in general, throughout all 
 southern Greece, the Turks were driven from the country districts, 
 and compelled to shut themselves up in the cities. 
 
 6. The year 1822 opened with the assembling of the first Greek 
 
 congress at Epidaurus," the proclaiming of a provisional 
 constitution on the 13th of January, and the issuing, 
 on the 27th, of a manifesto which announced the union of the Greeks 
 under an independent federative government, under the presidency 
 of Alexander Mavrocordato. But the Greeks, long kept in bondage, 
 and unaccustomed to exercise the rights of freemen, were unable at 
 once to establish a wise and firm governuent : they often quarreled 
 among themselves ; and their captain, or captains, who had exercised 
 an independent authority under the government of the Turks, could 
 seldom be brought to submit to the control of the central govern- 
 ment. The few men of intelligence and liberal views among them, 
 and the few foreign officers who entered their service, had a difficult 
 task to perform ; and all that enabled them to continue the struggle 
 was the wretchedly undisciplined state of the Turkish armies. 
 
 7. The principal military events of 1822 were the destruction of 
 Scio s by the Turks, the defeat of the Turks in the Morea, the successes 
 of the Greek fire-ships, and the surrender of Napoli di Romania 4 
 
 cities," is supposed to be derived from the circumstance of its having been constructed of the 
 ruins of the three cities Tegca, Mantinea, and Pallantium. (Map No. I.) 
 
 1. The peninsula of Cassandra is the same as the ancient Pellene, at the eastern entrance of 
 the Thermaic Gulf, now Gulf of Salonica. (Maps Nos. I. and X.) 
 
 2. Epidaurus. See Monembasia. 
 
 3. Scio (anciently Chios) is a celebrated and beautiful island, about thirty-two miles in length, 
 near the Lydian coast of Asia Minor. In antiquity, and in modern times down to the dreadful 
 catastrophe of 1822, the island, although for the most part mountainous and rugged, was cul- 
 tivated with the greatest care and assiduity. It was called the "paradise of modern Greece." 
 Scio aspired to the honor of being the native country of the first and greatest of poets, 
 
 "The blind old man of Chio ? s rocky isle." 
 
 4. Jfapoli di Rt mania (the ancient Jfauplia, the port of Argos) is situated on a point of land 
 at the head of the Argi lie Gulf, or Gulf of Nauplia. (.Map No. I )
 
 CHAP. VI. I NINETEENTH CENTURY. 519 
 
 to the Greeks. The Greek population of the flourishing and de- 
 fenceless island of Scio had declined every invitation to engage in. 
 the Revolution, until a Greek fleet appeared on the coast in March 
 1822, when the peasants arose in arms against their Turkish masters, 
 attacked the citadel, and put the Turkish garrison to the sword. To 
 punish the Sciots, on the 1 1th of April five thousand of the most bar- 
 barous of the Turkish Asiatic troops were landed on the island, 
 which was given up to indiscriminate pillage and massacre ; and in a 
 few days the paradise of Scio was changed into a scene of desolation. 
 According to the Turkish accounts, twenty thousand individuals were 
 put to the sword, and a still greater number, mostly women and 
 children, sold into slavery. Soon after, one hundred and fifty villages 
 in southern Macedonia experienced the fate of Scio ; and the pacha 
 of Salonica 1 boasted that he had destroyed, in one day, fifteen hun- 
 dred women and children 
 
 8. In the meantime the Turks had made extensive preparations to 
 conquer western Greece the ancient Epirus, Acarnania, and j?Et61ia ; 
 and relieve the Turkish garrisons in the Morea ; but after some suc- 
 cesses they experienced a series of defeats so disastrous, that, during 
 the month of August alone, more than twenty thousand Turks per- 
 ished by the sword. In June, soon after the destruction of Scio, 
 forty-seven Greeks rowed a number of fire-ships into the midst of the 
 fleet of the enemy, and blew up the vessel of the Turkish admiral, 
 with more than two thousand men on board. The admiral himself, 
 mortally wounded, was carried on shore, where he died. On the 10th 
 of November, seventeen daring sailors conducted two fire-ships into 
 the midst of the Turkish fleet off the island of Tenedos, 2 and fastened 
 one of them to the admiral's ship, and the other to that of the second 
 in command. The former narrowly escaped ; the latter blew up with 
 eighteen hundred men on board. Several of the Turkish vessels 
 were wrecked on the Asiatic coast ; others were captured ; and out 
 of a fleet of thirty-five vessels that had sailed for the relief of the 
 
 1. Salonica, (anciently Thess&onica, at the head of the Thermaic Gulf in Macedonia,) is now 
 celebrated city and seaport if European Turkey, at the north-eastern extremity of the 
 
 Gulf of Salonica. The town was known to Herodotus, Thucydides, and .flischines, by the 
 name of Thcrma, but Cassandra changed its name to that of his wife Tbessalonica, the 
 daughter of Philip, and sister of Alexander the Great. In Thessalonica the Apostle Paul made 
 many converts, to whom he adressed the Epistle to the Thessalonians. (Maps Nos. I. and X.) 
 
 2. Tenedos is a small but celebrated island of Turkey, in the ^Egean Sea, (Archipelago,) 
 fifteen miles south-west from the mouth of the Dardanelles, and about five miles west frum 
 "toe Asiatic coast. According to Virgil, (SEneid ii.) it was the place to which the Grecian fleet 
 made the feigned retreat before the sack of Troy, p/op No. III.)
 
 520 MODERN HISTORY. [PABT II. 
 
 Morea, only eighteen returned, much injured, to the Dardanelles. 
 Finally, to crown the successes of the year, on the 1 2th of December 
 the strong Turkish fortress of Napoli di Romania was carried by 
 assault. 
 
 9. During the year 1823 the war was carried on with re? ilts gen- 
 
 erally favorable to the Greeks. In Thessaly and Epirus 
 in 183 
 
 there was a suspension of arms : on the 22d of March 
 
 the Greek fleet gained a victory over an Egyptian flotilla : daring 
 expeditions were made to the coast of Asia Minor : a Turkish army 
 of twenty-five thousand men, that attempted to invade the Morea by 
 way of the Corinthian Isthmus, was repulsed by the brave Suliot 
 leader Marco Botzaris, who fell in the moment of victory ; and the 
 Turks failed in repeated attacks on Missolonghi. 1 In the summer 
 of this year the illustrious poet, Lord Byron, arrived in Greece, and 
 took an active part in aid of Greek independence ; but he died at 
 Missolonghi on the 19th of April following. 
 
 10. The Turks commenced the campaign of 1824, while dissensions 
 
 prevailed among the Greek captains, by seizing Negro- 
 pont, subduing Candia, and reducing the small but 
 strongly-fortified rocky island of Ipsara, in which latter place the 
 heroic Greeks blew up their last fort, after two thousand of the enemy 
 had entered it, and thus perished with their conquerors. The Turk- 
 ish fleet next made an attempt on Samos, but was driven away in 
 terror by the skill and boldness of the Greek fire-ships. A large 
 Egyptian fleet, sent to attack the Morea, was frustrated in all its de- 
 signs, and the campaign terminated gloriously to the Greeks. 
 
 1 1. The campaign of 1825 was opened by the landing, in the Morea, 
 
 of an Egyptian army under Ibrahim Pacha, son of the 
 viceroy of Egypt, whom the sultan had induced to engage 
 in the war. Navarino soon fell into his power ; nor was his course 
 arrested till he had carried desolation as far as Argos. In the 
 meantime Missolonghi was closely besieged by a combined laud and 
 naval Turkish force, which, on the 2d of August, after a contest of 
 several days, suffered a disastrous defeat, with the loss of nine thou- 
 sand men. But Missolonghi was again besieged, for the fourth time, 
 the siege being conducted by Ibrahim Pacha alone, who had an army 
 of twenty -five thousand men, trained mostly by French officers. Af- 
 ter repelling numerous assaults, and enduring the extremities of 
 
 1. Jlissolong/ii is or. tbe coast of ^Etolia, about ten miles west of the ancient Chalcis. 
 ijlap No. I.)
 
 CHAP. VI] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 521 
 
 famine, Missolonglii at length fell, on the 22d of April, 1826, when 
 eighteen hundred of the garrison cut their way through 
 the enemy, and reached Saloua 1 and Athens in safety. 
 Many of the inh xbitants escaped to the mountains ; large numbers 
 were captured in their flight ; and those who remained in the city, 
 about one thousand in number, mostly old men, women and children, 
 blew themselves up in the mines that had been prepared for the 
 purpose. Five thousand women and children were made slaves, and 
 more than three thousand ears were sent as a precious trophy to 
 Constantinople. 
 
 12. Ibrahim Pacha was now in possession of a large part of 
 southern Greece, and most of the islands of the Archipelago or 
 JEigeau Sea ; and the foundation of an Egyptian military and slave- 
 holding State seemed to be laid in Europe. This danger, connected 
 with the noble defence and sufferings of Missolonghi, roused the atten- 
 tion of the European governments and people : numerous philanthropic 
 societies were formed to aid the suffering Greeks ; and, 
 
 finally, on the 6th of July, 1827, a treaty was concluded 
 at London between England, Russia, and France, for the pacification 
 of Greece stipulating that the Greeks should govern themselves, but 
 that they should pay tribute to the Porte. 
 
 13. To enforce this treaty, in the summer of 1827 a combined Eng- 
 lish, French, and Russian squadron, sailed to the Grecian Archipel- 
 ago ; but the Turkish sultan haughtily rejected the intervention of 
 the three powers, and the troops of Ibrahim Pacha continued their 
 devastations in the Morea. On the 20th of October the allied squad- 
 ron entered the harbor of Navarino, where the Turkish-Egyptian fleet 
 lay at anchor ; and a sanguinary battle followed, in which the allies 
 nearly destroyed the fleet of the enemy. The Porte, enraged by the 
 result, detained the French ships at Constantinople, stopped all com- 
 munication with the allied powers, and prepared for war. 
 
 14. In the following year the French cabinet, in connection with 
 England, sent an army to the Morea : Russia declared war for vio- 
 lations of treaties, and depredations upon her commerce ; 
 
 and on the 7th of May a Russian army of one hundred 
 
 and fifteen thousand men, under command of Count Wittgenstein, 
 
 crossed thePruth," and by the second of July had taken seven for 
 
 1. Salona is the same as the ancient Amphissa, in Locris. See Jlmpliissa, p. 96. (Map No 1.) 
 
 2. The river PrutA, forming the boundary between the Russian province of Bessarabia and 
 the Turkish province of Moldavia, enters the Danube about sixty miles from its mouth. (Map* 
 Nos. X. and XVII.)
 
 #22 MODERN HISTORY. [PABT IL 
 
 tresses from ;Le Turks. In August a convention was concluded 
 with .Ibrahim Pacha, who agreed to evacuate the Morea with his 
 troops, and set his Greek prisoners at liberty. In the meantime the 
 Greeks continued the war, drove the Turks from the country north 
 of the Corinthian Gulf, and, towards the close of the year, fitted out 
 a great number of privateers to prey upon the commerce of the 
 Turks in the Mediterranean. In consequence of these measures the 
 sultan banished from Constantinople all the Greeks and Armenians 
 not born in the city, amounting to more than twenty-five thousand 
 persons. 
 
 15. In the month of January, 1829, the sultan received a protocol 
 from the three allied powers, declaring that they took 
 
 the Morea and the Cyc' lades 1 under their protection, and 
 that the entry of any military force into Greece would be regarded as 
 an attack upon themselves. The danger of open war with France 
 and England, together with the successes and alarming advance of 
 the Russians, now commanded by Marshal Diebitsch, who, by the 
 close of July, had crossed the Balkan 2 mountains and reached the 
 Black Sea, and on the 20th of August, took Adrianople, within one 
 hundred and thirty miles of the Turkish capital, induced the sultan 
 to listen to overtures of peace. On the 14th of September the 
 peace of Adrianople was signed by Turkey and Russia, by which the 
 sultan recognized the independence of Greece, granted to Russia 
 considerable commercial advantages, and guaranteed to pay the ex- 
 penses of the Russian war. 
 
 16. The provisional government of Greece, which had been or- 
 ganized during the Revolution, was agitated by discontents and jeal- 
 ousies ; for some time the country remained in an unsettled condition, 
 and the president, Count Capo d'Istria, was assassinated in October 
 1831. The allied powers, having previously determined to erect 
 Greece into a monarchy, first offered the crown to Prince Leopold of 
 Saxe-Coburg, (since king of Belgium,) who declined it on account 
 of the unwillingness of the Greeks to receive him, and their dissatis- 
 faction with the boundaries prescribed by the allied powers. Finally, 
 
 1. The Cyc' lades is a name given by the ancient Greeks to that large cluster of islands in the 
 jEgean Sea lying east of southern Greece. (Map No. III.) 
 
 2. The Balkan mountains are the same as the ancient Hcemus, which formed the northern 
 boundary of Thrace, separating it from Maesia. (See JV/ap No. IX.) The Balkan range extends 
 from th3 Black Sea westward a distance of about two hundred and fifty miles, dividing tho 
 Turkish provinces of Bulgaria and Rouraelia, and the waters that flow into the Danube on 
 the north from those that flow into the Ma itza on the south. (Map No. X.)
 
 CHAP. VI] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 523 
 
 the crown was cotferred on Otho, a Bavarian prince, who arrived at 
 Nauplia in 1833. 
 
 VI. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1830. 1. On the death of Louis 
 XVIII., in 1824, the crown of France fell to his brother Charles X,, 
 who commenced his reign by a declaration of his intentions of con- 
 firming the constitutional charter that had been granted the French 
 people at the time of the first restoration. But the new king, bit- 
 terly opposed to the principles of the Revolution, and governed by 
 the counsels of bigoted priests, labored to build up an absolute mon- 
 archy, with a privileged nobility and clergy for its support ; while, 
 on the other hand, the people, persuaded that a plot was formed to 
 deprive them of their constitutional privileges, talked of open resist- 
 ance to the arbitrary demands of the court. A ministry, which the 
 popular party had forced upon the king, was suddenly dismissed, and 
 in August, 1 829, an ultra-royalist ministry was appointed, at the head 
 of which was Prince Polignac, one of the old royalists, and an early 
 adherent of the Bourbons. 
 
 2. At the opening of the Chambers in March 1830, the speech 
 from the throne plainly announced the determination of the king to 
 overcome, by force, any obstacles that might be interposed in the 
 way of his government, concluding with a threat of resuming the 
 concessions made by the charter. As soon as this speech was made 
 public the funds fell ; the ministers had a decided majority opposed to 
 them in the Chamber of Deputies, and a spirited reply was returned, 
 declaring that " a concurrence did not exist between the views of the 
 government and the wishes of the people ; that the administration 
 was actuated by a distrust of the nation; and that the nation, on the 
 other hand, was agitated with apprehensions which threatened its 
 prosperity and repose." The king then prorogued the chambers, 
 and on the 17th of May a royal ordinance declared them dissolved, 
 and ordered new elections, measures that produced the greatest ex- 
 citement throughout France. 
 
 3. In the meantime the king and his ministers, hoping to facilitate 
 their projects, and overcome their unpopularity by gratifying the 
 taste of the French people for military glory, declared war against 
 Algiers, the Dey having refused to pay long-standing claims of French 
 citizens, and having insulted the honor of France by striking the 
 French consul when the latter was paying him a visit of ceremony. 
 A fleet of ninety-seven vessels, carrying more than forty thousand 
 soldiers, embarked at Toulon on the 10th of May, on the 14th of
 
 524 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 June effected a landing on the African coast, and on the 5th of 
 July compelled Algiers to capitulate, after a feeble resistance. The 
 Dey was allowed to retire unmolested to Italy ; and his vast treasures 
 fell into the hands of the conquerors. 
 
 4. The success of the French arms in Africa occasioned great ex- 
 ultation in France, but did nothing towards allaying the excited state 
 of public feeling against a detested ministry. The elections, ordered 
 to be held in June and the early part of July, resulted in a large in- 
 crease of opposition members ; and the ministerial party was left in 
 a miserable minority. The infatuated ministry, however, instead of 
 withdrawing, madly resolved to set the voice of the nation at defiance, 
 and even to subvert the constitutional privileges granted by the 
 charter. They therefore induced the king to publish, on the morn- 
 ing of the 26th of July, three royal ordinances, the first dissolving 
 the newly-elected Chamber of Deputies the second changing the 
 law of elections, sweeping off three-fourths of the former constituency, 
 and nearly extinguishing the representative system and the third, 
 suspending the liberty of the press. In the ministerial report, pub- 
 lished at the same time with these ordinances, the ministers argue, in 
 favor of the latter measure, that " At all epochs, the periodical press 
 has only been, and from its nature must ever be, an instrument of 
 disorder and sedition" ! 
 
 5. In defiance of these ordinances the conductors of the liberal 
 journals determined to publish their papers ; and on the evening of 
 the same day, the 26th, they published an address to their country- 
 men, declaring tha 1 " the government had stripped itself of the charac- 
 ter of law, and was no longer entitled to their obedience," language 
 that would probably have exposed them to the penalties of treason 
 if the contest had terminated differently. It was late in the day be- 
 fore intelligence of the arbitrary measures of government was gen- 
 erally circulated through Paris : then crowds began to assemble in 
 the streets : cries of " down with the ministry," and " the charter 
 forever," were heard : the fearless harangued the people ; and during 
 the night the lamps in several of the streets were demolished, and 
 the windows of the hotel of Polignac broken. So little had the 
 king anticipated any popular outbreak, that he. passed the day of the 
 26th in the amusements of the chase ; and it appears that the infatu- 
 ated ministry had not even dreamed of a Revolution as the conse- 
 quence of their obnoxious measures. 
 
 6. On the morning of the 27th several of the journalists printed
 
 CHAP. VI] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 525 
 
 and distributed their papers ; but their doors were soon closed, and 
 their presses broken by the police. This morning the king appointed 
 Marsha^. Marmont commander-in-chief of the forces in Paris ; but it 
 was not till four in the afternoon that orders were given to put the 
 troops under arras, when they were marched to different stations, 
 to aid the police, and overawe the people. The latter then be- 
 gan to arm : some skirmishing occurred with the troops : during the 
 night the lamps throughout the city were demolished ; and, under 
 the cover of darkness, many of the streets were barricaded with 
 paviijg-stones torn up for the purpose. At the close of the clay Mar- 
 niont had informed the king that tranquillity was restored ; and 
 therefore no additional troops were sent for ; nor were the great 
 depots of arms and ammunition guarded. 
 
 7. At an early hour on the morning of the 28th, armed multitudes 
 appeared in the steets ; and numbers of the National Guard, which 
 the king had previously disbanded, appeared in their uniform among 
 the throng, and with them the famous tri-colored flag, so dear to the 
 hearts of all Frenchmen. To the surprise of Marmont, the king, 
 and the ministry, the riot, which, on the previous evening, they had 
 thought suppressed, had assumed the formidable aspect of a Revolu- 
 tion. By nine o'clock the flag of the people waved on the pinnacles 
 of Notre Dame, and at eleven it surmounted the central tower 
 of the Hotel de Ville, which was afterwards, however, retaken by 
 the royal troops. Marmont showed great indecision in his move- 
 ments : his columns were everywhere assailed with musketry from 
 the barricades, from the windows of houses, from the corners of the 
 streets, and from the narrow alleys and passages which abound in 
 Paris ; and paving-stones and other missiles were showered upon 
 them from the house-tops. The royal guards were disheartened : 
 the troops of the line showed great reluctance to fire upon the citi- 
 zens ; and the 28th closed with the withdrawal of the royal forces 
 from every position in whk?h they had attempted to establish them 
 selves during the day. 
 
 8. The contest was renewed early on the morning of the third daj>, 
 when several distinguished military characters appeared as leaders of 
 the people, and among them General Lafayette, who took command 
 of the National Guard ; but while the issue was yet doubtful, several 
 regiments of the line went over to the insurgents, who, thus strength- 
 ened and encouraged, rushed upon the Louvre and the Tuilleries, 
 and speedily overcame the troups stationed there. So suddden was
 
 526 MODERN HISTORY. [FART IX. 
 
 the assault that Mannont himself with difficulty escaped, leaving be- 
 hind him more than twenty thousand dollars of the public funds. 
 About half past three P. M. the last of the military posts in Paris 
 surrendered ; the royal troops who escaped having in the meantime 
 retreated to St. Cloud, where were the king and ministry, now in con- 
 sternation for their own safety. The Revolution was speedily com- 
 pleted by the installation of a provisional government : on the 31st 
 Louis Phillippe, Duke of Orleans, 3 - the most popular of the royal 
 family, accepted the office of lieutenant-general of the kingdom : 
 when the Chambers met he was elected to the throne ; and on the 
 9th of August took the oath to support the constitutional charter. 
 
 9. The results of the revolutionary movement in France, and the 
 overthrow of the elder branch of the Bourbons, in defiance of the 
 guarantees of the congress of Vienna, spread alarm among the sov- 
 ereigns of continental Europe ; and the emperor of Russia went so 
 far as not only to hesitate about acknowledging the title of the citi- 
 zen king of France, but, as is believed, was preparing to support the 
 claims of the exiled Charles X., when the popular triumph in Eng- 
 land, in the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832, by converting a 
 former ally into an enemy, raised up obstacles that arrested his 
 measures. Charles X., after having abdicated the throne, was per- 
 mitted to retire unmolested from France ; but his ministers, attempt- 
 ing to escape, were arrested, and afterwards brought to trial, when 
 three of them, including Polignac, were declared guilty of treason, 
 and sentenced to imprisonment for life. At the end of six years they 
 were released from confinement, indignation towards them having 
 given place to pity. 
 
 VII. BELGIUM. 1. The French Revolution of 1830 produced a 
 powerful sensation throughout Europe, and aroused, an insurrection- 
 ary spirit wherever the people complained of real or fancied wrongs, 
 while the continental sovereigns, on the other hand, alarmed for the 
 safety of their thrones, looked with jealousy on every political move- 
 ment that originated with the people, and prepared to suppress, by 
 military force, the incipient efforts of rebellion. The Belgians, who 
 had been compelled by the congress of Vienna to unite with the Hol- 
 landers in forming the kingdom of the Netherlands, having long been 
 goaded by unjust la^s, and treated rather as vassals, than as subjects, 
 
 a. Louis Phillippe, Duke of Valeria at his birth, Duke of Chartres on the death of his grand- 
 father in 1785, and Duke of Orleans on the death of hia father in 1794, was the SOD of Louia 
 Phillippe Joseph, Duke of Orleans, better known under his Revolutionary title of PhiMp 
 Egalite. '
 
 CHAP. VI] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 527 
 
 of the Dutch king, judging the period favorable for dissolving their 
 union with a people foreign to them in language, manners, and in- 
 terests, arose in insurrection at Brussels, in the latter part of August, 
 andj after a contest of four days' duration, drove the Dutch authori- 
 ties and garrison from the city. 
 
 2. In vain were efforts made by the Prince of Orange to reconcile 
 the 3onflicting demands of the Dutch and the Belgians, and again 
 unite the two people under one government. The proposals of the 
 prince were disavowed by his father the king of Holland, and equally 
 rejected by the Belgians ; and on the 4th of October the latter made a 
 formal declaration of their independence. Soon after, the representa- 
 tives of the five great powers, France, Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, 
 and Austria, assembled at London, agreed to a protocol in favor of 
 an armistice, and directed that hostilities should cease between 
 the Dutch and Belgians. The Belgians, having decided upon a 
 constitutional monarchy, first offered the crown to the Duke of 
 Nemours, the second son of Louis Phillippe ; but the latter de- 
 clined the proffered honor on behalf of his son ; after which the 
 Belgian congress elected Leopold, prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 1 
 for their king. As the Dutch continued to hold the city of Antwerp, 
 contrary to the determination of the five great powers, a French 
 army of sixty-five thousand men, under Marshal Gerard, entered Bel- 
 gium in November 1832, and, after encountering an obstinate defence, 
 compelled the surrender of the place on the 24th of December. 
 Since her separation from Holland, Belgium has increased rapidly in 
 every industrial pursuit and social improvement. 
 
 VIII. POLISH REVOLUTION. 1. By the decrees of the congress of 
 Vienna, most of that part of Poland which Napoleon had erected 
 into the Grand puchy of Warsaw, and conferred upon his ally the 
 king of Saxony, (see p. 487,) was reestablished as an independent 
 kingdom, to be united to the crown of Russia, but with a separate 
 constitution and administration; and on the 20th of June, 1815, the 
 Russian emperor Alexander was proclaimed king of Poland. The 
 mild character of Alexander had inspired the Poles with hopes that 
 he would protect them in the enjoyment of their liberties ; but his 
 ' 
 
 < 1. Saze-Coburg-Gotha is a duchy of central Germany, consisting of the two principalities, 
 Saxe-Coburg, and Gotha ; the former on the south side of the Thuringian forest, and the latter 
 on the north side. Area of the whole, seven hundred and ninety-seven square miles : popula 
 tion one hundred and forty thousand : chief towns, Coburg, and Gotha. The government is 
 a constitutional monarchy. The house of Saxe-Coburg has intermarried with the principal 
 reigning families of Europe. (Map Vo. XVIL")
 
 528 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 fine professions soon began to prove delusive: ere long none but 
 Russians held the chief places of government : the article of the 
 constitution establishing liberty of the press was nullified : publicity 
 of debate in the Polish diet was abolished ; and numerous state 
 prosecutions imbittered the feelings of the Poles against their 
 tyrants. 
 
 2. On the accession of Nicholas to the throne of Russia, in De- 
 cember 1825, although the lieutenancy of Poland was intrusted to a 
 Pole, yet the real power was invested in the king's brother, the 
 Archduke Constantine, who held the appointment of commander-in- 
 chief of the army. Constantine proved to be the worst of tyrants 
 a second Sejanus delighting in every species of judicial iniquity 
 and ministerial cruelty. The barbarities of Constantine, sanctioned 
 by Nicholas, revived the old spirit of Polish freedom and nationality: 
 and the successful examples of France and Belgium roused the Poles 
 again to action. Secret societies, organized for the express purpose 
 of securing the liberty of Poland, and uniting again under one gov- 
 ernment those portions that had been torn asunder and despoiled by 
 the rapacity of Bussia, Prussia, and Austria, existed not only in Po- 
 land proper and Lithuania, but also in Volhynia 1 and Podolia, and 
 even in the old provinces of the Ukraine, which, it might be sup- 
 posed, had long since lost all recollections of Polish glory. 
 
 3. The fear of detection and arrest on the part of some members 
 of one of these societies, led to the first outbreak at Warsaw, on the 
 evening of the 29th of November, 1830. The students of a military 
 school at Warsaw, one hundred and eighty in number, first attempted 
 to seize Constantine at his quarters, two miles from the city ; but 
 during the struggle with his attendants, of whom the Russian general 
 Gendre, a man infamous for his crimes, was killed, -the duke escaped 
 to his guards, who, being attacked in a position from which retreat 
 was difficult, lost three hundred of their number, when the students 
 returned to the city, liberated every State prisoner, and were joined 
 by the school of the engineers, and the students of the university. A 
 party entered the only two theatres open, calling out, " Women, 
 home men, to arms !" The arsenal was next forced, and in one 
 hour and a half from the first movement, forty thousand men were 
 in arms. Constantine fell back to the frontier. Chlopicki was first 
 appointed by the provisional government commander-iu-chief of the 
 
 1. Volhynia is a province of European Prussia, formerly comprised in the kingdom of Poland) 
 lying south of Grodno and Minsk. (May No. XVII.)
 
 CHAP VI] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 529 
 
 army of Poland, and afterwards was made dictator ; but he soon re 
 signed, and Adam Czartoriski was appointed president. 
 
 4. After two months' delay in fruitless attempts to negotiate with 
 the emperor Nicholas, who refused all terms but absolute submission, 
 the inevitable conflict began Russia having already assembled an 
 army of two hundred thousand men under the command of Field 
 Marshal Diebitsch, the hero of the Turkish war, while the Poles had 
 only fifty thousand men equipped for the fight. On the 5th of Feb- 
 ruary, 1831, the Russians crossed the Polish frontier : on the 18th 
 their advanced posts were within ten miles of Warsaw ; and on the 
 20th a general action was brought on, which resulted in the Poles 
 retiring in good order from the field of battle. On the 25th forty 
 thousand Poles, under Prince Radzvil, withstood the shock of more 
 than one hundred thousand of the enemy ; and at the close of the 
 day ten thousand of the Russians lay dead on the field, and several 
 thousand prisoners were taken. 
 
 5. Skryznecki, being now appointed commander-in-chicf of the 
 Polish forces, concerted several night attacks for the evening of the 
 31st, which resulted in the total rout of twenty thousand Russians, 
 and the capture of a vast quantity of muskets, cannon and ammuni- 
 tion. These successes were so rapidly followed up, that before the 
 end of April the Russians were driven either across the Bug 1 into 
 their own territories, or northward into the Prussian dominions. The 
 conduct of Prussia, in affording the Russians a secure retreat on 
 neutral territory, and furnishing them with abundant supplies, while 
 in all similar cases the Poles were detained as prisoners, destroyed 
 all advantages of Polish valor. Austria, likewise, permitted the 
 Russians to pass over neutral ground to outflank the Poles, but de- 
 tained the latter as prisoners if they once set foot on Austrian terri- 
 tory. Thus Russia and Austria interpreted and enforced the princi- 
 ples of the " Holy Alliance." 
 
 6. While the Poles were stationed at Minsk," Skryznecki, uniting 
 all his forces in that vicinity, to the number of twenty thousand, sud- 
 denly crossed the Bug-and forced his way to Ostrolenka, 3 a distance 
 
 1. The Bug, a large tributary of the Vistula, forms a great part of the eastern boundary of 
 Ihe present Poland. Another river of the same name, running south-east through Podolia and 
 Kherson, fulls into the estuary of the Dnieper, east of Odessa. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Minsk is a small town of Poland, about twenty-five miles south-east of Warsaw. A large 
 city of the same name is the capital of the Russian province of Minsk, formerly embraced in 
 Poland. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. Ottrolenka is a smaR town sixty-eight miles north-east from Warsaw. (Map No. XVIL) 
 
 Y 34
 
 53C MODERN HISTORY. [PAET IL 
 
 of eighty miles, where, on the 26th of May, he engaged in battle 
 with sixty thousand Russians. The combat was terrific no quarter 
 was asked, and none was given. The Poles, led by the heroic Gen- 
 eral Bern, lost one-fourth of their number. The loss ot' the Russians 
 was less in proportion, but they had three generals killed on the field. 
 In the following month, both the Russian commander-in-chief, Mar- 
 shal Diebitsch, and the Archduke Constantine, died suddenly. .About 
 the same time a conspiracy for setting at liberty all the Russian 
 prisoners, thirteen thousand in number, was detected at Warsaw. 
 
 7. Dissensions among the Polish chiefs, and the want of an ener- 
 getic government, soon produced their natural consequences of di- 
 vided counsels, and disunited efforts in the field ; and by the 6th of 
 September, during the strife of factions at Warsaw, a Russian armj 
 of one hundred thousand men, supported by three hundred pieces of 
 cannon, had assembled for the storming of the city. Although de- 
 fended with heroism, after two days' fighting, in which the Russians 
 had twenty thousand slain, and the Poles about half that number, 
 Warsaw surrendered to the Russian general Paskewitch the main 
 body of the Polish army, and the most distinguished citizens, retiring 
 from the city, and afterwards dispersing, when no farther hopes re- 
 mained of serving their ill-fated country. Large numbers crossed 
 the frontiers and went into voluntary exile in other lands : most of 
 the Polish generals, who surrendered under an amnesty, were sent to 
 distant parts of the Russian empire ; and the soldiers, and Polish 
 nobility, were consigned by thousands to the dungeons and mines of 
 Siberia. The subjugation of Poland is complete : her nationality 
 seems extinguished forever. 
 
 IIL ENGLISH REFORMS. FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848. REVO- 
 LUTIONS IN THE GERMAN STATES, PRUSSIA, AND AUS- 
 TRIA. REVOLUTIONS IN ITALY. HUNGARIAN 
 WAR. USURPATION OF LOUIS NAPOLEON. 
 
 I. ENGLISH REFORMS. 1. From the death of George the Third, 
 in 1820, to the death of George the Fourth, in June 1830, England 
 was agitated by a continued struggle between the two great parties 
 which divided the nation the whigs and the tories. Civil disabili- 
 ties of all kinds were loudly objected to, and political abuses denounc- 
 ed with a plainness and force never before known in England. In 
 1828 the reform party obtained the abolition of the test act, which, 
 though nearly obsolete in point of fact, still imposed nominal disabili- 
 ties on Protestant dissenters ; and in \ 829 the barriers which had
 
 CHAP. Vl.J NINETEENTH CENTURY. 531 
 
 so long excluded lloman Catholics from the legislature were removed. 
 At the time of the accession of William IV., in 1830, a tory ministry, 
 headed by the Duke of Wellington, was in power ; but the decided 
 sentiment of the nation in favor of reform in all the branches of gov- 
 ernment, occasioned its resignation in November of the same year. A 
 whig ministry, pledged for reform, with Earl Grey at its head, then 
 came J;nto power ; and on the first of March of the following year 
 Lord John Russell brought forward in parliament the ministerial 
 plan for reforming the representation of England, Scotland, and 
 Ireland, which, if adopted, would extend the right of suffrage to half 
 a million additional voters, disfranchise fifty-six of the so-called rot- 
 ten or decayed boroughs, and more nearly equalize representation 
 throughout the kingdom. After a long but animated debate the bill 
 passed a second reading in the House of Commons by a majority of 
 only one, but was lost on the third reading, the vote being two hun- 
 dred and ninety-one for the bill, and two hundred and ninety-nine 
 against it. 
 
 2. By advice of the ministers, the king hastily dissolved parlia- 
 ment, and ordered new elections for the purpose of better ascertain- 
 ing the sense of the people. The elections took place amid great 
 excitement, and the advocates of reform were returned by nearly all 
 the large constituencies. The new parliament was opened on the 
 14th of June, 1831. The reform bill, being again introduced, passed 
 the commons by a nyijority of one hundred and thirteen, but was re- 
 jected by the lords, whose numbers remained unchanged, by a ma- 
 jority of forty-one. The rejection of the bill by the lords led to 
 strong manifestations of popular resentment against the nobility : 
 serious riots occurred at Nottingham and Derby; 1 and at Bristol 3 
 many public buildings, and an immense amount of private property, 
 were destroyed ; ninety persons were killed or wounded ; five of the 
 rioters were afterwards executed, and many were sentenced to trans 
 portation. 
 
 3. On the 12th of December Lord John Russell a third time in 
 troduced a reform bill, similar to the former two ; and on the 23d 
 of March, 1832, it passed the Commons by a majority of one hundred 
 and sixteen, but was defeated in the House of Lords by a majority 
 
 1. Derby is a large town on the Derwent, one hundred and ten miles north-west from London. 
 
 2. Bristol is a large and important city and seaport of England, at the confluence of the 
 Avon and the Frome, eight miles from the entrance of the former into Bristol Channel, and 
 one hundred and eight miles west from London. The city extends over six or seven distinct 
 bills and their intermediate valleys, amidst a picturesque aud fertile district. (Map No. XVI.)
 
 532 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II 
 
 of forty. The ministry now advised the king to create a sufficient 
 number of peers to insure the passage of the bill ; and on his refusal 
 to proceed to such extremities, all the members of the cabinet re- 
 signed. Political unions were now formed throughout the country ; 
 the people determined to refuse payment of taxes, and demanded 
 that the ministers should be reinstated. There were no riots, but 
 the people had risen in their collective strength, determined to. assert 
 their just rights. The king yielded to the force of public opinion, 
 and Earl Grey and his colleagues were reinstated in office, with the 
 assurance that, if necessary, a sufficient number of new peers should 
 be created to secure the passing of the bill. "When the lords were 
 apprized of this fact they withdrew their opposition ; but it is worthy 
 of remark that many of them, and all the bishops, left their seats on 
 the final passage of the bill, which, having been rapidly hurried 
 through both houses, received the royal assent on the 7th of June. 
 
 4. The passage of the Keform bill was, to England, a political 
 revolution none the less important because it was bloodless, and 
 carried on under the protection of law. Thereby the electoral 
 franchise, instead of being confined to a varied and limited class in 
 the interest of the ' aristocracy, was extended, not to the whole citi- 
 zens, as in America, but to a large body comprising the middle 
 classes of society, who 1 were thus, in effect, vested with supreme 
 power in the British empire. An entire change in the foreign policy 
 of the country was the consequence. The French Revolution of 1830 
 had elevated to power the middle classes of the French people also ; 
 and the ceaseless rivalry of four centuries between France and Eng- 
 land was, for the time, forgotten : the political interests of the two 
 great powers of "Western Europe were united ; and the Russian auto- 
 crat, in full march to overturn the throne of the citizen-king, and 
 put down republicanism in France, was arrested on the Vistula, where 
 his arms found ample employment in crushing the last remnants of 
 Polish nationality. As to England herself, none of the many evils 
 arising from democratic ascendency in the government, so often pre- 
 licted by the aristocratic party, have yet followed in the train of re- 
 form ; but, oifthe contrary, the peace, power, and prosperity of the 
 country, have increased thereby. 
 
 5. The reign of William IV. was terminated on the 19th of June, 
 1837, when the Princess Victoria, daughter of the Duke of Kent, 
 and grand-daughter of George III., succeeded to the throne, at the 
 age of eighteen years. One effect of the descent of the crown to a
 
 CHAP. VI] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 533 
 
 female was the separation from it of Hanover, after a union of more 
 than a century. On the 10th of February, 1840, her majesty wag 
 married to Albert, prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a duchy of 
 central G-ermany. 
 
 II. FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848. 1. The most important events 
 that distinguished the reign of Louis Phillippe were the abolition 
 of the hereditary rights of the French peerage in October 1831 ; 
 the siege of Antwerp, and its surrender by the Dutch, after a long 
 and vigorous resistance, in 1832; an attempt of Louis Napoleon 
 Bonaparte, nephew of the emperor Napoleon, to excite an insurrec- 
 tion at Strasbourg, in October 1836, for the purpose of overthrowing 
 the government ; the second attempt of Louis Napoleon to excite a 
 revolution in France, by landing at Boulogne in August 1840, and 
 his subsequent condemnation to perpetual imprisonment ; and, in 
 December of the same year, the splendid pageant of the restoration 
 of the remains of the emperor Napoleon to France. 
 
 2. Louis Phillippe had been selected to fill the throne of France 
 chiefly through the instrumentality of the venerable Lafayette, who, 
 thinking France still unfitted for a republic, preferred for her " a 
 throne surrounded by republican institutions." Placed in this 
 anomalous position, Louis Phillippe, in the vain attempt to concili- 
 ate both monarchists and republicans, had a diflicult game to play ; 
 and while he was laboring to consolidate his power, a large and influ- 
 ential party, that he dare not openly denounce, was zealously striving 
 to undermine it. Yet for a time, with an immense revenue, and un- 
 bounded patronage, and the numerous means of political corruption 
 which they placed at his disposal, the government of Louis Phillippe 
 seemed to be steadily acquiring solidity, and by its success in keep- 
 ing down domestic factions, and maintaining friendly relations with 
 foreign powers, acquired a high reputation for wisdom and firmness. 
 
 3. Yet amid all this seeming security, the middle and lower classes, 
 disappointed in their expectations as to the results of the Revolution 
 of 1830, were daily growing more and more discontented with the 
 measures and policy of the government ; and it was this all-pervading 
 feeling of discontent, which, without any serious aggressions on the 
 part of government, and without any previous conspiracy on the part 
 of the people, led to the unpremeditated Revolution of February 
 1848, a revolution which, in its completeness and importance, and 
 the bloodless means by which it was accomplished, is without a par 
 allel in history.
 
 534 MODERN HISTORY. [PAKT IL 
 
 4. During the winter of 1847-8 numerous political reform ban- 
 quets were held throughout France ; and the omission of the king's 
 health from the list of toasts on these' occasions was a circumstance 
 that added much to the jealousy with which these displays were re- 
 garded by the government. The leaders of the opposition having 
 announced that reform banquets would be held throughout France 
 on the 22d of February, Washington's birthday ; on the evening 
 preceding the 22d, the administration forbade the intended meeting 
 in Paris, and made extensive military preparations to suppress it if 
 it were attempted, and to crush at once any attempt at insurrection. 
 In the Chamber of Deputies, then in session, this arbitrary measure 
 of government was warmly discussed, when the opposition members, 
 consenting to give up the meeting for the morrow, concurred in the 
 plan of moving an impeachment of ministers, with the expectation 
 of obtaining either a change of cabinet, or a dissolution of the Cham- 
 ber and a new election, which would test the sense of the nation. 
 
 5. On the morning of the 22d the opposition papers announced 
 that the banquet would be deferred, when the orders for the troops 
 of the line to occupy the place of the intended meeting were counter- 
 manded, and picquets only were stationed in a few places ; but no 
 serious disturbance was anticipated, either by the ministry or its op- 
 ponents. The announcement of the opposition journals, however, 
 came too late ; and at noon a large concourse, chiefly of the working 
 classes, had assembled around the church of the Madeline, where 
 the procession was to have been organized. But the multitude ex- 
 hibited no symptoms of disorder, and were dispersed by the munici- 
 pal cavalry without any loss of life. In the evening, however, dis- 
 iurbances began : gunsmiths' shops were broken open ; barricades 
 were formed ; lamps extinguished ; the guards were attacked ; the 
 streets were filled with troops ; and appearances indicated a sangui- 
 nary strife on the morrow. 
 
 6. At an early hour on Wednesday, February 23d, crowds again 
 appeared in^the streets, barricades were erected, and some skirmish- 
 ing ensued, in which a few persons were killed. Numbers of the 
 National Guards also made their appearance, and a portion of them, 
 having declared for reform, sent their colonel to the king, to acquaint 
 his majesty with their wishes. He immediately acceded to their 
 requests, dismissed the Guizot cabinet, and requested Count Mole to 
 form a new ministry. This measure produced a momentary calm ; 
 but the rioters continued to traverse the streets, often attacking, and
 
 CHAP. VI] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 535 
 
 Bometimes disarming, the municipal guards. Between ten and eleven 
 in the evening a crowd, passing the Hotel of Foreign Affaire, was 
 suddenly fired upon by the troops with fatal effect. The people fled 
 in consternation, but their thirst for vengeance was aroused, and the 
 cry, " To arms ! Down with the assassins ! Down with Louis Phil- 
 lippe ! Down with the Bourbons !" resounded throughout Paris. 
 
 7. The attempt to establish a Mole administration having failed, 
 the king sent, late at night, for M. Thiers, and intrusted to him the 
 formation of a ministry that should be acceptable to the people ; and 
 on the following morning, the 24th, a proclamation to the citizens of 
 Paris announced that M. Thiers and Odillon Barrot had been ap- 
 pointed ministers that orders had been given the troops to cease 
 firing, and retire to their quarters that the Chamber would be dis- 
 solved, and an appeal made to the people and that General Lam- 
 oriciere had been appointed commandant of the National Guards. 
 The order to the troops to retire, which occasioned the resignation 
 of their commander, Marshal Bugeaud, after a protest against the 
 measure, was a virtual surrender, on the part of government, of the 
 means of defence ; and the king and royal family soon found them- 
 selves at the mercy of an excited populace. The troops quietly al- 
 lowed themselves to be disarmed by the mob, who then, to the num- 
 ber of twenty thousand, and accompanied by the National Guard, 
 directed their course to the Palace Koyal and the Tuilleries, and 
 demanded the abdication of the king. In the course of the day the 
 king signed an abdication in favor of his grandson, the young Count of 
 Paris ; but before this fact was generally known the armed populace 
 broke into the palace, made a bonfire of the royal carriages and furni- 
 ture, and after having carried the throne of the state reception room 
 in triumph through the streets, burned that also. Meanwhile the 
 ex-king and queen escaped to St. Cloud, whence they pursued their 
 way to Versailles, and thence to Dreux, from which latter place they 
 escaped in disguise to England, whither they were followed by M. 
 Guizot, and other members of the late ministry. 
 
 8. On the day of the king's abdication the Chamber of Deputies 
 assembled ; but, being overwhelmed by the crowd, the greatest con- 
 fusion prevailed, and amid shouts of " No king ! Long live the Re- 
 public," the members of a provisional government were named, and 
 adopted by popular acclamation. Although a majority of the depu- 
 ties seemed opposed to the establishment of a republic, and it was 
 by no means certain that there was any great party out of Paris in
 
 536 MODERN HISTORY. [PART JL 
 
 its favor, every attempt to adjourn the question was the signal of re- 
 newed shouts and disorder ; and amid the turbulent demonstrations 
 of the Parisian populace the French Republic was adopted, and pro- 
 clamed to the nation. Royalty had vanished, almost without a 
 straggle, blown away by the breath of an urban tumult, and the 
 strangest revolution of modern times was consummated. 
 
 9. The leading member of the provisional government was M 
 Lamartine, to whom belongs the renown of saving the country from 
 immediate anarchy. By his noble and fervid eloquence the passions 
 of the mob were calmed ; and by his prompt and judicious measures, 
 among the first of which was the declaration of the abolition of capi- 
 tal punishment for political offences, tranquillity and confidence were 
 at once restored. On the 26th the bank of France was reopened ; 
 the public departments resumed their duties ; and with unparalleled 
 unanimity the army, the clergy, the press, and the people, in the 
 provinces as well as in Paris, immediately gave in their adhesion to 
 the new Republic. 
 
 10. The Revolution of February, 1848, was accomplished by the 
 union of the two great sections of the democratic party the Mod- 
 erate and the Red Republicans. The principles advocated by the 
 former were the right of self-government, civil and religious liberty, 
 and universal suffrage. The latter went much farther, and, adopting 
 the leading principles of the Socialists, demanded the establishment 
 of new social relations between capital and labor ; a new distribution 
 of wealth, the elevation of the laboring classes at the expense of the 
 wealthy, labor and food to all, by government regulations, and the 
 working out, on a national scale, of the grand problem of Commun- 
 ism. Believing that it is the duty and in the power of government to 
 remedy most of the many evils of society, the people soon began to 
 manifest the hopes which they expected the Revolution to transform 
 into realities. Deputations from all trades and callings even to 
 shoe-cleaners, waiters, and nursery-maids waited on the provisional 
 government, making known their grievances, and demanding relief, 
 which generally consisted of freedom from taxation, the establish- 
 ment of national workshops, fewer hours of labor, higher wages, and 
 more holidays. 
 
 11. Although the Moderate and Red Republicans had united in 
 overthrowing the monarchy, no sooner was tranquillity restored than 
 the animosities of the two sections revived ; and when it was found 
 that the Moderates had control of the provisional government, their
 
 CHAP. VI] IHNETEEXTH CEXTURY. 537 
 
 opponents determined upon its overthrow. On several occasions 
 during the month of April, the working classes of Paris assembled 
 in mass to make a demonstration of their numbers ; but the fidelity 
 of the National Guard showed that the real physical power of Paris 
 was still in the hands of the provisional government. The elections, 
 held in April, also showed a large majority in favor of the Moderate 
 party ; and on the ballot, in May, for an executive committee of the 
 government, consisting of five members, not one of the avowed Red 
 Eepublicans was elected ; and Ledru Rollin, the most violent and 
 ultra of the committee, was the lowest dn the list. 
 
 12. On the loth of May the National Assembly was surrounded 
 by the populace, led by Barbes, Blanqui, Hubert, and other Com- 
 munist leaders, who, after having driven the deputies from their seats, 
 and assumed the functions of government, proclaimed themselves the 
 national executive committee, and through Barbes, one of their num- 
 ber, declared that a contribution of a thousand millions of francs 
 should be levied on the rich for the benefit of the poor that a tax 
 of another thousand millions should be raised for the benefit of Po- 
 land that the National Assembly should be dissolved and, finally, 
 that the guillotine should be put in operation against the enemies of 
 the country. But in the meantime the National Guard was called 
 out, the rioters were soon dispersed, their leaders arrested, and the 
 provisional government reinstated. 
 
 13. Owing to the fear of another demonstration against the gov- 
 ernment, the full command of all the troops in Paris was given to 
 General Cavaignac, the minister of war ; and all the approaches to 
 the National Assembly, and the different ministries, were strongly 
 guarded. In June, the government, finding the burdens imposed 
 on the public treasury too heavy to be borne, determined to send out 
 of Paris, to the provinces, about twelve thousand of the workmen then 
 unprofitably employed in the national workshops. This was the 
 signal of alarm : disturbances began on the evening of the 22d : on 
 the 23d the most active preparations were made by both parties for 
 the coming contest, and some blood was shed at the barricades erect- 
 ed by the insurgents. At one o'clock on Saturday morning, the 24th, 
 General Cavaignac declared Paris in a state of siege, and the struggle 
 began in earnest. From that hour until four o'clock in the afternoon, 
 when the insurgents were driven from the left bank of the Seine, the 
 musketry and cannonade were incessant, and Paris was a vast battle- 
 field. The fight was renewed at an early hour on Sunday morning, 
 
 T*
 
 538 MODERN HISTORY. 
 
 and continued during most of the day, and it was not till noon on 
 Monday that the struggle was terminated, by the unconditional sur- 
 render of the last body of the insurgents. The number killed and 
 wounded in this insurrection by far the most terrible that has ever 
 desolated Paris will never be known ; but five thousand is probably 
 not a high estimate. 
 
 14. The exertions and success of General Cavaignac in defending 
 the government procured for him a vote of thanks from the Assembly, 
 and the unanimous appointment of temporary chief-executive of the na- 
 tion, with the power of appointing his ministers. Many of the leaders 
 of the insurrection, among them Louis Blanc and Caussidiere, fled from 
 the country : a small number of those taken with arms in their hands 
 were condemned to transportation ; but the great majority, after a 
 short confinement, were set at liberty. The Assembly, in the mean- 
 time, proceeded with its task of constructing the new Constitution, 
 which was adopted on the 4th of November, 1848, by a vote of 
 seven hundred and thirty-nine in its favor, and thirty in opposition. 
 It declared that the French nation had adopted the republican form 
 of government, with one legislative assembly, and that the executive 
 power should be vested in a President, to be elected by universal 
 suffrage, for a term of four years. Its principles were declared to be 
 liberty, equality, and fraternity ; and the basis on which it rested, 
 family, labor, property, and public order. 
 
 III. KEVOLUTIONS IN THE GERMAN STATES, PRUSSIA, AND AUSTRIA. 
 1. As soon as the first accounts of the French Revolution of the 24th 
 of February, 1848, reached Germany, the whole of that vast country 
 was in a ferment : popular commotions took place in all the large 
 cities ; and the people demanded a political constitution that should 
 give them a share in legislation, establish the liberty of the press, 
 and otherwise secure them their just rights. On the 29th of Feb- 
 ruary deputations from every town in the Grand Duchy of Baden de- 
 manded of the Grand Duke liberty of the press, trial by jury, th 
 right of tKe people to bear arms, and meet in public, and a more 
 popular representation in the national diet at Frankfort. 8 - On the 
 
 a. The present confederation of Germany, organized in 1815, embraces nearly forty States, 
 some cf very small dimensions, but each possessing an independent government, and only 
 liable to be called on to furnish its proportionate contingent to the army of the Confederation 
 in case of danger. The emperor of Austria, being the sovereign of many territories that were 
 considered flefs of the German empire, is a member of the Germanic Confederation ; and bis 
 minister has the right of presiding in the Confederate Germanic Diet, held at Frankfort. Tho 
 Austrian German provinces belonging to the Germanic Confederation are the arch-duchy of
 
 CHAP. VL] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 539 
 
 the 2d of March the Duke yielded to their demands, and appointed 
 a ministry from the popular party. 
 
 2. Similar demonstrations were made in nearly all the German 
 States. At Cologne, a riot ensued, the town-house was stormed, and 
 the authorities made prisoners. At Munich the people stormed the 
 arsenal, and, having possessed themselves of the arms it contained, 
 forced from the Bavarian king the concessions which he had refused 
 to make. At Hanau, 1 in Hesse Cassel, 2 the Elector yielded only af- 
 ter a severe conflict. Within a week from the revolution in Paris 
 the demands of the people had been acceded to throughout nearly all 
 the south and west of Germany. 
 
 3. In a popular convention held at Heidelberg 3 on the 5th of March, 
 the necessity of the reforms demanded by the people was insisted upon ; 
 and at the same time the Federal Diet, sitting at Frankfort, invoked 
 the different German States to take the measures necessary for a new 
 constitution of the Diet, providing that the people as well as the 
 rulers should be represented in it. King Frederick William of 
 Prussia, after having in vain' resisted a popular revolution in Berlin, 
 unexpectedly to all placed himself, foremost in the ranks of the reform 
 party, with the tope, it is believed, of reuniting the German States 
 in one great empire, and placing himself at its head. The king of 
 Saxony was compelled to grant the requests of his subjects, who had 
 pronounced in favor of reform : the king of Hanover also yielded, 
 but with much reluctance, and only when farther delay would have 
 cost him his throne. On the 2Gth of March, Sleswick and Holstein, 4 
 the two southern duchies of Denmark, which had always considered 
 
 1. Hanau is a town of fifteen thousand inhabitants in the electorate of Hesse, eleven miles 
 north-east from Frankfort. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Hesse Cassel is an irregularly-shaped State of Germany, consisting of a central territory 
 and several detached portions, the whole lying mostly north of north-western Bavaria. The 
 government is a limited monarchy. Hesse Darmstadt, or the Grand Duchy of Hesse, also a 
 limitad monarchy, is divided by Hesse Cassel part of it lying north and part south of the 
 river Mayn. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. Heidelberg- is a city of northern Baden, on the south side of the Neckar, forty-eight miles 
 south of Frankfort. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 4. Sleswick and Holstein. See p. 403, and Maps Nos. XIV. and XVII. 
 
 Austria, the kingdom of Bohemia, with Moravia and Silesia, part of Galicia, the county of 
 Tyrol, and the duchies of Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, with the town of Trieste. The other 
 States of the Austrian empire have no connection with the Germanic Confederation. The king 
 of Prussia, in the same manner as the Austrian emperor, is a member of the Confederation. 
 The empires of Austria and Prussia, and the kingdoms of Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, and 
 Wirtemburg, have, each, four votes in the German Diet ; and the smallest State, the free city 
 of Hamburg, containing an area of only forty-three square miles, has one vote : the principality 
 of Lichtenstein, with a population of only seven thousand, has also one vote.
 
 540 MODERN HISTORY. [PAKT H. 
 
 themselves as governed by the king of Denmark in his capacity of a 
 prince of Germany, long dissatisfied with the Danish rule, and irri- 
 tated by the refusal of the king to accede to any of their demands, 
 declared themselves independent of Denmark, and solicited admission 
 into the Germanic Confederation. Being assisted by twenty thousand 
 Prussian and Hanoverian volunteers, they waged a sanguinary war 
 against the Danish king until foreign intervention terminated the 
 contest. 
 
 4. For some time there had been much political excitement in 
 those portions of the Austrian empire embracing Galicia, 1 Hungary, 
 and northern Italy ; but down to the period of the French Revolu- 
 tion, in February 1848, the German provinces of the empire had re- 
 mained tranquil. When, however, news of the downfall of Louis 
 Phillippe reached Vienna, a shock was felt which vibrated through- 
 out the whole Austrian empire : the public funds immediately fell 
 thirty per cent. : the people, sympathizing with the Parisians, ex- 
 pressed themselves upon the great subject of reform with a freedom and 
 earnestness altogether foreign to their habits ; and the royal family, 
 panic-stricken by the gathering tempest, were closeted in deep con- 
 sultation. All the royal family and the imperial cabinet, with the 
 exception of the Archduke Louis, uncle of the emperor, and the min- 
 ister Metternich, were in favor of making immediate concessions to 
 the people, as the only means of retaining the provinces, if not of 
 preserving the throne. Metternich tendered his resignation, but was 
 persuaded to retain his post only on condition of being, as hitherto, 
 unobstructed in his administration of the government. 
 
 5. At the opening of the Diet of Lower Austria, at Vienna, on 
 the 13th of March, an immense concourse of citizens, headed by the 
 students of the University, marched to the hall of the Assembly, and 
 there presented their petition in favor of a constitutional government, 
 a responsible ministry, freedom of the press, a citizens' guard, trial 
 by jury, and religious freedom. The crowd increasing, the Arch- 
 duke Albert ordered the people to disperse, but, not being obeyed, 
 commanded the soldiers to fire upon them. Many victims fell, and 
 the greatest excitement was occasioned, which was only partially 
 calmed by an order from the emperor for the military to withdraw. 
 
 6. The city guard had in the meantime sided with the people, and 
 
 1. Oalicia and Lodomeria, now constituting a province of the Austrian empire, and lying 
 north of Hungary, include those territories of Poland which have fallen to Austria in tho Trt- 
 0<M partitions of that country. (Map No. XVII.)
 
 CHAP. VI] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 541 
 
 opened to them the arsenal. Metternich and the Archduke Albert 
 resigned. On the next day, the 14th, the emperor abolished the 
 censorship of the press, and assented to the formation of a National 
 Guard ; and forty thousand citizens enrolled their names, and were 
 furnished with arms. On the following day, the 15th, all the other 
 demands of the people were complied with, and a promise given that 
 a convention of deputies from each of the provinces should be as- 
 sembled as speedily as possible for the purpose of framing a consti- 
 tution for the empire. This announcement was received with ex- 
 pressions of the greatest joy ; and the supposed dawn of Austrian 
 liberty was celebrated by triumphal processions and illuminations. 
 
 7. The first period of the Revolution terminated with the triumph 
 of the people, and was followed by apparently sincere efforts on the 
 part of the government to fulfil its promises and carry out the reforms 
 projected. But serious difficulties intervened. The various races in 
 the empire Germans, Magyars, Slavonians, and Italians were jeal- 
 ous of each other, while their wants and requirements were dissimi- 
 lar : the people, generally, were unprepared for free institutions ; and 
 the government was undecided to what extent concessions were expe- 
 dient. During the whole of April and May, the mob, guided by the 
 students, who often conducted themselves disgracefully, ruled in 
 Vienna : the liberty of the press degenerated into licentiousness : a 
 shameful literature flooded the city : violations of law and order 
 were frequent : the Reign of Terror commenced ; and finally, on the 
 18th of May, the emperor, anxious for his personal safety, secretly 
 left Vienna and repaired to Innspruck * in the Tyrol. But the with- 
 drawal of the emperor was not what the people wished, and they de- 
 sired him, now that Metternich was removed, to lead them onward 
 in the way of reform. Returning in. August he strove in vain to 
 resume the reins of government : the students of the university and 
 the democratic clubs usurped the entire control of the city, and, in 
 the name of democracy, exercised a most cruel and unmitigated des- 
 potism. 
 
 8. In the meantime the Bohemians, of Slavic origin, opposed to 
 every measure tending to identify them with the German Confedera- 
 tion, had demanded of the emperor a constitution that should give 
 them a national existence, equivalent, in its relations with the empire, 
 to that enjoyed by the Hungarians. Being refused their demands, a 
 
 1. Innspruck, the chief city of the Tyrol, is on the river Ion, two hundred and forty mile* 
 south-west from Vienna.
 
 542 MODERN HISTORY. [PAKT II. 
 
 congress of the Slavic nations of the Austrian empire had assembled 
 at Prague early in June, and was discussing the various plans of 
 Slavic regeneration, when a vast assemblage of citizens aud students 
 addressed a " Storm Petition" to Prince Windischgratz, the military 
 commander of the city, demanding the withdrawal of the regular 
 troops, and a distribution of arms and ammunition for the use of the 
 people. The petition not being granted, the people rose in open re- 
 volt ; a most fearful and bloody conflict ensued within the city, which 
 was also bombarded from the surrounding heights, and after almost 
 an entire week of fighting, on the 17th the city capitulated. The 
 Slavic congress was broken up ; the bright visions of Bohemian na- 
 tionality vanished; and subsequently the strong national feelings 
 of the Slavonic population, and their hatred alike of Magyars and 
 Germans, rendered them the chief supporters of the Austrian throne 
 and government. 
 
 9. At this time Hungary 1 was striving for a peaceable maintenance 
 of her rights against Austrian encroachments ; and Croatia, 2 which 
 was considered as an integral part of the Hungarian monarchy, en- 
 couraged by Austria, had revolted, and her troops were already on 
 their march towards the Hungarian capital. Austria now openly 
 supported the Croats ; and ah order of the emperor, on the 5th of 
 October, for some troops stationed in Vienna to march against Hun- 
 gary, produced another Revolution in the Austrian capital. The 
 people, sympathizing with the Hungarians, opposed the march of the 
 troops : a sanguinary contest followed ; the insurgents triumphed ; 
 the ministry was overthrown ; the minister of war murdered ; and 
 the emperor fled to Olmutz, 3 attended by the troops that remained 
 
 1. Hungary, taken in its widest acceptation, includes, besides Hungary proper, Croatia, 
 Slavonia, the military frontier provinces, the Banat, and Transylvania. The Carpathian moun- 
 tains form the boundary of Hungary on the north-east, separating it from Galicia and Lodo- 
 meria. The greater part of the kingdom consists of two extensive plains ; the plain of Upper 
 Hungary, north of Buda, traversed by the Danube from west to east ; and the great plain of 
 Southern Hungary, south of Buda, watered by the Danube and its tributaries, the Drave, 
 the ^ave, and the Theiss, with the numerous affluents of the latter. The whole of this 
 lower plain, an exceedingly fertile territory, embracing thirty-six thousand English square 
 miles, is in scarcely a single point more than one hundred feet above the level of the Danube. 
 (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Croatia, (Austrian) regarded as forming the maritime portion of Hungary, has Slavonia, 
 Turkish Croatia, and Dalmatia, on the east and south-east, and the Adriatic on the south-west. 
 The Drave separates it from Hungary proper. The Croats are of Slavonic stock, and speak a 
 dialect which has a greater affinity with the Polish than any other language. About the year 
 1180 Croatia was incorporated with Hungary. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. Olmtttz, a town of Moravia, and one of the strongest fortresses of the Austrian empire, U 
 on the river March, forty miles north-east of Brunn. Olmutz was taken by the Swedes in the
 
 CHAP. VL] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 543 
 
 faithful to his cause. Fortunately for the' emperor, a large and faith- 
 ful army in other parts of the empire enabled him soon to conceatrate 
 an overwhelming force around the chief seat of rebellion : Prince 
 Windischgratz from the north, and Jellachich the ban or governor 
 of Croatia from the south, united their forces before Vienna : on 
 the morning of the 28th of October they opened their batteries on 
 the city; and on the 31st, after a great destruction of life and prop- 
 erty, compelled an unconditional surrender. Of sixteen hundred 
 persons arrested under martial law, nine only were punished with 
 death. 
 
 10. While these events were occurring at Vienna, a Hungarian 
 army of twenty or thirty thousand men, which had pursued Jellachich 
 to the Austrian frontiery had remained there many days awaiting an 
 invitation from the Viennese to come to their aid. At last, on the 
 28th of October, the Hungarians took the responsibility of advancing 
 into the Austrian territory : on the 30th and 31st they met the im- 
 perialists, when some skirmishing ensued ; but the fatal blow had 
 already been struck at Vienna, and the Hungarian army recrossed 
 the frontiers. 
 
 11. The second Revolution of Vienna was a riot, neither national 
 nor liberal in its character, and not participated in by the other 
 parts of the empire ; but its suppression, in connection with the 
 scenes of anarchy which preceded it, produced an unfavorable effect 
 on the cause of freedom throughout the whole of Germany. A re- 
 action had already taken place in the popular mind : peace, under 
 imperial rule, began to be preferred to the unchecked excesses of the 
 mob : the emperor Ferdinand, yearning for repose, resigned his 
 crown in favor of 'his nephew the Archduke Joseph : the government 
 resumed its despotic powers ; and Austria fell back to her old posi- 
 tion. In Prussia, Frederick William, imitating the Austrian empe- 
 ror, and calling the army to his aid, dissolved the assembly which he 
 had called for the purpose of constructing a constitution, and forgot 
 all his promises in favor of reform and constitutional liberty. With 
 Prussia and Austria against them, the smaller German States, di- 
 vided in their counsels, could accomplish nothing ; and the project 
 of German unity was virtually abandoned. 
 
 IV. REVOLUTIONS IN ITALY. 1. Since the fall of Napoleon, Aus- 
 trian influence has been predominant in Italy. The Congress of 
 
 Thirty Years' War : it was besieged unsuccessfully by Frederick the Great iu 1758 ; aud Lafay> 
 ette was confined there in 1794. (.Map No. XVII.)
 
 544 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 Vienna assigned to Austria the whole Milanese and Venetian p r ov- 
 inces, now included in Austrian Lombardy : at the same time the 
 dependent thrones of Tuscany, Modena, 1 and Parma, 4 were filled by 
 members of the house of Hapsburg; and it was not long before 
 Austria, in her steady adherence to the principles of despotism, had 
 exacted treaties from all the princes of Italy, stipulating that no con- 
 stitution should be granted to their subjects. When, in 1820, the 
 Neapolitans established a constitution, Austria suppressed it by the 
 force of arms, (see p. 516) : in 1821 she interfered in Piedmont; 
 and in 1831 and 1832, in the Papal States' also, for the purpose of 
 suppressing all liberal tendencies, whether in the government or the 
 people. 
 
 2. The election in June 1846, of Cardinal Mastai, to fill the pon- 
 tifical chair, with the appellation of Pius- the Ninth, threatened the 
 subversion of Austrian influence throughout a great part of Italy. 
 The pope, a plain upright man, earnestly desiring to ameliorate the 
 condition of his people, immediately commenced the work of reform ; 
 and the liberal course pursued by him at once revived the spirit of 
 nationality throughout the entire peninsula. Austria, alarmed by 
 these movements, used every means to change the course of the pope ; 
 and on the 19th of July, 1847, the Austrian army entered Ferrara, 4 
 a northern frontier town of the Papal States. The occupation of 
 Ferrara was the signal for a general rising against the emperor of 
 Austria, not only in Home, but also in Florence, Bologna, 6 Lucca,' 
 and Genoa, without regard to their distinct governments. In De- 
 
 1. The Duchy of Modena is a State of northern Italy, having Austrian Lombardy on the 
 north, the northern division of the Papal States on the east, Parma on the west, and Tuscany, 
 Lucca, and the Mediterranean, on the south. Modena, the ancient Mutina, is the capital. The 
 government, an absolute monarchy, is possessed by a collateral branch of the House of Austria. 
 
 2. The Duchy of Parma adjoins Modena on the west, and has Austrian Lombardy on the 
 north, from which it is separated by the Po. Government, an absolute monarchy. Capital, 
 Parma, thirty-three miles south-west from Mantua. 
 
 3. The Papal States, or the " States of the Church," occupying a great part of central, with a 
 portion of northern Italy, have Austrian Italy on the north, from which they are separated by 
 the Po ; Modena, Tuscany, and the Mediterranean, on the west ; the Neapolitan dominions on 
 the south ; and the Adriatic on the north-east. 
 
 4. Ferrara, formerly an independent duchy belonging to the family of Est6, and now tha 
 most northern city belonging to the pope, is on the west bank of the Volano, five miles south 
 of the Po, and fifty-three miles south-west from Venice. 
 
 5. Bologna, the second city in rank in the Papal States, is at the southern verge of the val_'<ey 
 of the Po, twenty-five miles south-west from Ferrara. Bologna, which has always assumed the 
 title of " Learned," has given birth to eight popes, nearly two hundred cardinals, and Kure 
 than one thousand literary and scientific men and artists. 
 
 6. Lucca, a duchy of central Italy, and, next to San Marino, the smallest of the Italian 
 States, has the duchy of Modena on the north, and the Mediterranean on the south-west 
 Lucca, iti capital, is eleven miles north-east of Pisa, and thirty-eight west of Florence.
 
 CHAP. VI.] NINETEENTH CEXTURY. 545 
 
 oember the Austrian army was withdrawn ; and the right of the 
 States of Italy, not under Austrian rule, to choose their own forms 
 of government, seemed to be conceded. 
 
 3. The Austrian emperor, fearing for the safety of Lombardy, 
 which was already in commotion, increased his forces in that prov- 
 ince, until, in the beginning of March 1848, the different garrisons 
 numbered a hundred thousand men. The proclamation of a republic 
 in France hastened the crisis in the Austrian portion of Italy, and, 
 by the unexpected tidings of the Revolution in Vienna, the climax 
 was precipitated. On the 18th of March the citizens of Milan arose 
 in insurrection, and after a contest of five days drove the Austrian 
 troops, commanded by Marshal Radetsky, from the city. At the 
 same time the Austrians were driven out of Parma and Pavia ; and 
 nearly all the Venetian territory was in open insurrection. On the 
 23d of March the king of Sardinia, Charles Albert, issued a procla- 
 mation in favor of Italian nationality, and marched into Lombardy 
 to aid in driving the Austrians beyond the Alps. The Austrian gen- 
 eneral, Radetsky, a skilful and veteran commander, retreated until he 
 could concentrate all his forces, when he returned to meet the Ital- 
 ians, who, gradually overpowered by superior numbers, were soon 
 compelled to retire ; and one by one the Austrians regained possess- 
 ion of all the cities from which they had been driven. After defeat- 
 ing the Sardinian king in several engagements during the latter part 
 of July, on the 5th of August Radetsky was again before Milan : all 
 Lombardy submitted ; an armistice was agreed upon ; and Charles 
 Albert retired to his own dominions. 
 
 4. After some attempts of England and France to mediate be- 
 tween the contending parties, the armistice was terminated by Charles 
 Albert on the 20th of March, 1849, on the avowed ground that its 
 terms had been repeatedly violated by the Austrians ; but, in reality, 
 in obedience to the clamors of his people, and as the only chance of 
 saving his crown, and preventing Sardinia from becoming a republic. 
 Sardinia was poorly prepared for the conflict : her forces were badly 
 organized, and her officers incompetent ; while opposed to them was 
 one of the most efficient and best-disciplined armies in Europe, under 
 the command of an able and experienced general. At twelve o'clock 
 on the 20th, the moment that the armistice expired, Radetsky entered 
 Piedmont, while the Sardinians were utterly ignorant of his move- 
 ments ; and by the 24th the war was at an end. Charles Albert, 
 defeated in three battles, and rightly judging that more favor would 
 
 35
 
 546 MUDERS HISTORY. [PABT IL 
 
 be shown bis countrymen if the supreme power were in other hands, 
 abdicated in favor of his son Victor Emanuel on the evening of the 
 23d, and in a few hours left the country bidding adieu not only to 
 his crown, but his kingdom also. Victor Emanuel purchased peace 
 by the payment of fifteen millions of dollars as indemnity for the ex 
 penses of the war. 
 
 5. While these successes were attending the Austrian arms in 
 Piedmont, an Austrian army was blockading Venice, which on the 
 22d of March, 1848, had proclaimed the " Republic of Saint Mark/ 1 
 Venice held out until her provisions were exhausted, and an immense 
 amount of property had been destroyed not less than sixty thousand 
 shot and shells having been thrown into the city during the last few 
 days of the siege. In the last days of August 1849, Venice sur- 
 rendered to Marshal Radetsky ; and 'with the fall of the Republic 
 of Saint Mark, Austria recovered her authority throughout all north- 
 ern Italy. 
 
 6. During this period the southern portions of the peninsula were 
 far from enjoying tranquillity. The subjects of Ferdinand, king of 
 Naples 1 and Sicily, had risen early in 1848, and their demands for a 
 constitution were acceded to ; but the promises of the king to the 
 Sicilians were broken, and Sicily revolted from his authority, and 
 elected for her sovereign the Duke of Genoa, the second son of 
 Charles Albert king of Sardinia. A sanguinary war between the 
 Neapolitans and Sicilians followed : Messina, after two days' bom- 
 bardment, fell into the hands of the Neapolitans : the Sicilians were 
 defeated in a desperate battle at Catania ; Syracuse, terror stricken, 
 surrendered without a blow : Palermo, 2 the last stronghold of the 
 islanders, fell after a short struggle ; and Ferdinand of Naples re- 
 sumed his former sway as unlimited monarch of the two Sicilies. 
 
 7. From -the well-known liberal character of Pius the Ninth, and 
 the manner in which his reign began, it was to be expected that, in 
 the Papal States at least, liberty would find a quiet asylum. For a 
 time prince and people were united in the noble cause of the political 
 regeneration of Italy ; but the people soon outran the pope in the 
 march of reform, and began to murmur because he lingered so far 
 behind them. He granted liberty of the press, and its license 
 alarmed him : he placed arms in the hands of the people, but could 
 
 1. The Kingdom of Navies, otherwise called the " Kingdom of the two Sicilies," nearly 
 identical with the Magna Graecia of antiquity, comf.-ises the southern portion of Italy, together 
 with Sicily and the adjacent islands. 
 
 2. Palermo : see Pan wmtw, p. 1 17.
 
 CHAP. VI] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 547 
 
 not control the use of them : he named a council to assist him in the 
 administration of civil affairs, but was dismayed at the cries for a 
 representative assembly that should share in the government of the 
 country. 
 
 8. In the summer of 1848 symptoms of reaction began to appear 1 
 Pius signified to the Roman Chamber of Deputies that it was asking 
 too much ; and his appointment of Rossi to the post of prime minis- 
 ter exasperated the people, and diminished his own popularity 
 Rossi's avowed hostility to the democratic movement led to hia 
 assassination on the 15th of November, as he was proceeding to open 
 the Chambers ; and eight days later the pope fled from Rome, and 
 took up his residence in Gaeta, 1 in the territory of the king of Naples. 
 On the 9th of February following, a National Assembly, elected by 
 the people, proclaimed that the pope's temporal power was at an end, 
 and that the form of government of the Roman States should be a 
 pure democracy, with the name of " The Roman Republic." 
 
 9. Month after month Pius remained at Gacta, unwilling to de- 
 mand foreign aid to reinstate him in his temporal sovereignty, and 
 hoping that his people, acknowledging their past misconduct, would 
 recall him of their own accord; but no signs of any change in his 
 favor being exhibited, he at length availed himself of the only re- 
 source left him. The Roman Catholic powers of Austria, Naples, 
 Spain, and France, responded to his appeal for aid : the Austrians 
 entered the Papal States on the north the Neapolitans on the 
 south a body of Spanish troops landed on the coast and, to the 
 shame of republican France, towards the close of April a French 
 army, under the command of General Oudinot, was sent to southern 
 Italy, under the avowed pretence of checking Austrian influence in 
 that quarter, but, in reality, as the sequel proved, to restore papal 
 authority on the ruins of the Roman Republic. 
 
 10. The pretended " friendly and disinterested mission" of the French 
 army was resisted with a heroism worthy of the days of the early. 
 Roman Republic, and the first attack of the French upon the city of 
 Rome resulted in their defeat ; but the assailants were reenforced, and, 
 after a regular siege and bombardment, on the 30th of June, 1849, 
 Rome surrendered. When the French troops entered the city they 
 were received with silence and coldness on the part of the people ; 
 
 1. Oaeta is a strongly-fortified seaport town, forty-one miles north-west from Naples, and 
 neveiity-two miles soutti-east from Rome. Cicen was put to death, by order of Antony, in thfl 
 immediate vicinity of ',his town.
 
 548 MODERN HISTORY. [PART II 
 
 the Roman guards could not be induced to pay them the customary 
 salute ; the common laborers refused to engage in removing the bar- 
 ricades from the streets, and the French soldiers were compelled to 
 perform this task themselves. Pius the Ninth returned to Rome, 
 stealthily, and in the night, a changed man. Three years of political 
 experience had changed his zeal for reform into the most imbit- 
 tered feelings towards all democratic institutions : political tolerance 
 gave place to the most determined support of absolutism ; and the 
 blessings with which his people once greeted him were changed to 
 curses. 
 
 V. HUNGARIAN WAR. 1. It has been mentioned that the imme- 
 diate cause of the second Revolution in Vienna, in October 1848, 
 was the order to some Austrian troops stationed in Vienna to march 
 to the aid of the Croats, who had revolted from Hungary. The Hun- 
 garian and Croatian war soon became a war between Hungary and 
 Austria. In order to understand the true character of this important 
 war it will be necessary to explain the previous political connection 
 between the two countries. 
 
 2. The Magyars, from whom the present Hungarians are descend- 
 ed, were a numerous and powerful Asiatic tribe, which, after over- 
 running a great part of central Europe, settled in the fertile plains 
 of the Danube and the Theiss, 1 about the close of the ninth century. 
 For a long period the government of the Magyars was an elective 
 monarchy, and in the year 1526 Ferdinand of Austria, of the house 
 of Hapsburg, was elected to the throne of Hungary ; and this was 
 the first connection between the two countries. Seven succeeding 
 Austrian princes of the same house were elected in succession by the 
 Hungarian Diet, until, in the year 1687, the Diet declared the suc- 
 cession to the Hungarian throne hereditary in the house of Hapsburg ; 
 yet the independence of the kingdom was not affected thereby, al- 
 though Hungary, with all its dependent provinces, among which was 
 Croatia, became permanently attached to the Austrian dominions. 
 The same as Bohemia, it acknowledged the Austrian emperor for its 
 monarch ; but Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia, were still separate 
 nations, each governed by its own laws. 
 
 3. In the year 1790 Leopold the Second, emperor of Austria, 
 yielded to the demands of the Hungarian Diet, and signed a solemn 
 
 1. The Theiss, (ancient Ttbiscus,) a northern tributary of the Danube, is a large and nari- 
 gable river of Hungary, flowing south through the great Hungarian piain. The area of its 
 basin is estimated at six thousand square miles. (Map No XVIIO
 
 CHAP. VI.] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 549 
 
 declaration that " Hungary is a free and independent nation in her 
 entire system of legislation and government," and that " all royal 
 patents not issued in conjunction with the Hungarian Diet, are. illegal, 
 null, and void." After the peace of 1815, Francis the Second re- 
 solved to govern Hungary without the aid of a Diet, in violation of 
 the laws which he had sworn to support ; but after a long period of 
 confusion he found it necessary, in 1825, to yield, and again summon 
 the Diet, His attempt to subvert the constitution of Hungary, ter- 
 minated in renewed acknowledgment of the constitutional rights of 
 the Hungarians, and a reiteration of the declaratory act of 1790. 
 
 4. Ferdinand the Fifth, who succeeded his father Francis in 1835, 
 took the usual coronation oath, acknowledging the rights, liberties, 
 and independence of Hungary ; and the project of incorporating 
 Hungary with Austria seemed to be abandoned ; but still the empe- 
 ror, by the exercise of the royal prerogative in making appointments 
 to office, could command a majority in the House of the Magnates, 
 and, by the influence which he could exert in the elections, hoped to 
 secure an ascendency in the House of Deputies. Moreover, the af- 
 fairs of Hungary, instead of being regulated in Hungary by native 
 Hungarians, were managed by a bureau or chancery in Vienna, under 
 the direct supervision and control of the Austrian cabinet. Austrian 
 influence very naturally produced an Austrian party in the country, 
 opposed to which was the great mass of the Hungarians, who took 
 the designation of the Liberal or Patriotic party. 
 
 5. At a most opportune moment, just after the first Revolution in 
 Vienna, in March 1 848, when the emperor had conceded to the people 
 of his hereditary States the rights and privileges which they demand- 
 ed, a deputation from Hungary appeared, asking, for their kingdom, 
 the royal assent to a series of acts passed by the Hungarian Diet, 
 providing for its annual meeting, the union of Transylvania and 
 Hungary, the organization of a National Guard, equality of taxation 
 for all classes, religious toleration, freedom of the press, and a re- 
 sponsible ministry. After some delay these acts received the royal 
 assent, and on the 1 1 th of April were confirmed by the emperor per- 
 sonally, in the midst of the Diet assembled at Pesth, 1 the capital of 
 Hungary. These concessions were received with the utmost joy 
 throughout the Hungarian nation. 
 
 1. Pesth, which, in conjunction with Buda, is the seat of government of Hungary, is on the 
 east side of the Danube, immediately opposite Buda, with which it is connected by a bridge 
 of boats. Population about ? 'xty-five thousand. It if one hundred ani thirty-five miles south- 
 cast from Vienna, (Map Na XVII.)
 
 550 MODERN HISTORY. 
 
 6. The sudden change from the restraints of a rigid government 
 to the enjoyment of constitutional liberty, exerted, among the masses 
 who had hitherto enjoyed no political privileges, and especially in the 
 provinces dependent upon Hungary, an influence the most adverse to 
 rational freedom. Liberty was construed to mean license : in some 
 places the Jews were plundered and maltreated : officers and jurors 
 who did their duty were sacrificed to the vengeance of the mob : the 
 imbittered feelings and prejudices of race were kindled into all their 
 fury ; and the most horrid atrocities were committed, while the new 
 government, scarcely organized, was too feeble to afford protection to 
 the persons and property of the more peaceful inhabitants. Calls 
 upon the Austrian government for assistance from the Austrian 
 troops in the provinces to suppress this anarchy were unheeded ; and 
 the indifference thus shown to the welfare of Hungary gave rise to the 
 first threats of separation. 
 
 7. A more alarming danger to Hungary was the opposition against 
 her in her own provinces, first secretly encouraged, and afterwards 
 openly aided, by the Austrian government. The Hungarian domin- 
 ions embrace a population of about fifteen millions, of wfyom only 
 six millions are Magyars ; and unfortunately the other eight millions 
 were so jealous of the Magyar ascendency as to be found either cold 
 to the cause of Hungary, or openly joining the Austrian party. 
 First the Croats, a portion of the southern Slavi, or Slavonians, 1 af- 
 ter demanding entire independence of Hungarian rule, and showing 
 a disposition to place themselves in more immediate connection with 
 Austria, also a Slavonic nation, took up arms against Hungary, and 
 rejected all advances towards reconciliation. Notwithstanding the 
 unconstitutionality of their position, the emperor sided in their favor, 
 and sent Austrian armies to their aid. Portions of Slavonia proper 
 joined the Croats ; and the Serbs, 8 or Servians, in eastern Slavonia, 
 distinguishing their revolt by the greatest atrocities, with unrelent- 
 ing fury laid waste the Magyar villages, and massacred the unresist- 
 ing inhabitants. The actual beginning of the war on the part of 
 Hungary was the bombardment, on the 12th of June, 1848, of Car- 
 
 1. The Slavonians comprise a numerous family of nations, descendants of the ancient Sar- 
 matians. The Slavonian language extends throughout the whole of European Russia ; and 
 dialects of it are spoken by the Croats, Servians, and Slavonians proper, and also by the Poles 
 and Bohemians. 
 
 2. The Serbs or Servians, who belong to the wide-spread Slavonian stock, are inhabitants of 
 the Turkish province of Servin ; bat many of the Serbs are scattered thrsughout the southern 
 Hungarian provinces.
 
 CHAP. VL] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 551 
 
 lowitz, 1 the metropolis or holy city of the Serbs. The city made a 
 brave defence : the Ottoman Serbs hastened across the frontiers to 
 the assistance of their brethren, and the Magyars were driven back 
 into the fortress of Peterwardein." The whole Servian race in the 
 Banat* then rose in rebellion, and the peninsula a at the confluence 
 of the Theiss and the Danube became the theatre of a furious con- 
 flict between the hostile races. Finally, on the 29th of June, the Aus- 
 trian cabinet, throwing off all disguise, announced the intention of 
 Austria to support Croatia openly. It soon appeared, also, that the 
 altered condition of Austria, consequent upon the late triumphs of 
 the imperial arms in Italy, had determined the emperor to revoke 
 the concessions recently made to Hungary. 
 
 8. The Hungarian Diet, now convinced that the constitution and 
 independence of Hungary must be defended by force of arms, decreed 
 a levy that should raise the Hungarian army to two hundred thou- 
 sand men. In the meantime Jellachich, the ban, or governor, of 
 Croatia, had advanced unopposed into Hungary, at the head of an 
 Austrian and Croatian army, and had arrived within twenty miles 
 of Pesth, when the eloquence and energy of Kossuth, one of the 
 leaders of the patriot party, collected a considerable body of troops, 
 and on the 29th of September Jellachich was repulsed and the capi- 
 tal saved. The ban fled, and on the 5th of October the rear guard 
 of the Croatian army, ten thousand strong, fell into the hands of the 
 Hungarians. 
 
 9. Hitherto both parties, the invaders and invaded, appeared to 
 be acting under the orders of the emperor-king, a kind-hearted man, 
 but of moderate abilities, and unfitted for the trying situation in 
 which he found himself placed. Wearied by the contentions in dif- 
 ferent parts of his empire, desiring the good of all his subjects, 'but 
 distracted by diverse counsels, and involved, by a series of intrigues, 
 in conflicting engagements, Ferdinand abdicated the throne on the 
 
 1. Carlowitz is a town of Slavonia, on the right bank of the Danube, four miles south-east of 
 Peterwardein. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Peterwardein, the capital of the Slavonian military frontier district, and one of the strongest 
 fortresses in the Austrian empire, is on the south bank of the Danube, in eastern Slavonia. It 
 derives its present name from Peter the Hermit, who marshalled here the soldiers of the first 
 crusade. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. The Banat, or Hungary-beyond-the-Theiss, is a large division of south-eastern Hungary, 
 having Transylvania on the east, and Slavonia on the west. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 a. " The very spot that was, in 1697, the theatre that witnessed the splendid victorias of 
 Eugene of Savoy over the Turks, and which were followed by the peace of Carlowitz, that 
 memorable era in the history of the house of Austria and of Europe." Stiles' Austria, ii. p. 68, 
 Bee p. 390.
 
 552 MODERN HISTORY. f PAKT IL 
 
 2d of December, but a short time after the second Revolution in 
 Vienna, (see p. 542 ;) and, by a family arrangement, the crown was 
 transferred, not to the next heir, Ferdinand's brother, but to his 
 nephew Francis Joseph. The Hungarian Diet, declaring that Ferdi- 
 nand had no right to lay down the crown of Hungary and transfer 
 it to another that the same was settled by statute on the direct heirs 
 of the house of Hapsburg and, moreover, that Francis Joseph had 
 uot taken the requisite oath, in the Hungarian capital, to preserve in- 
 violate the constitution, laws, and liberties, of the Hungarians, de- 
 nied the right of the new emperor to reign over their nation. The 
 Hungarians, however, averse to a war with Austria, attempted nego- 
 tiations for a settlement of all difficulties ; but the Austrian cabinet, 
 desirous of setting aside the constitutional privileges recently grant- 
 ed to Hungary, had resolved upon the unconditional submission of 
 the Hungarians ; and the new emperor yielded himself to the course 
 of policy dictated by his ministers. 
 
 10. With the alarming prospect of a desperate conflict with the 
 whole power of the Austrian empire, several of the Hungarian leaders, 
 who had thus far supported all the measures of the movement party, 
 withdrew altogether from the struggle ; but the great mass of the 
 Hungarian people, more than one-half of the high aristocracy, and 
 nearly all the untitled nobility, and both Romanist and Protestant 
 clergy, rallied around Kossuth, and sided with the country. Although 
 the peasantry, whom the constitution had elevated from the condition 
 of serfs to that of freemen, rose en masse, arms and ammunition 
 were wanting, and the regular troops of Hungary were still in Italy, 
 fighting the battles of Austria. Manufactories of powder and arms 
 had to be established ; but they arose as if by magic ; and in every 
 town the anvils rang with the clang of the arms which the artizans 
 forged by night and by day. But, after all possible efforts, the Hun- 
 garian army, at the actual opening of the campaign in December 
 1848, amounted to only about sixty-five thousand men, which was as 
 nothing compared with the forces which Austria was concentrating 
 for the subjugation of the country. 
 
 1 1. The plan of Prince Windischgratz, commander-in-chief of the 
 Austrian forces, consisted in invading Hungary from nine points at 
 the same time all the lines of attack tending to a common centre, 
 the capital of the kingdom. The main divisions of the Austrian 
 army, entering Hungary from the north and west, met with but little 
 opposition from the Hungarian general Gorgey, who had the com-
 
 CHAP. VI] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 553 
 
 mand in that quarter, and on the 5th of January, 1849, both "Win- 
 dischgratz and Jellachich entered Pesth without striking a blow. 
 Kossuth and the government retired to Debreczin, 1 in the south- 
 eastern part of the kingdom, leaving a strong garrison, however, in 
 the almost impregnable fortress of Comorn, 2 while the Hungarian 
 forces gradually concentrated in the valley of the Theiss, from 
 Eperies 5 to the Danube. To protect the rear, General Bern, a Pole, 
 was sent to Bukowina, 4 at the eastern extremity of Transylvania, at 
 the head of ten thousand men. 
 
 12. On the 30th of January the Hungarians lost the strong for- 
 tress of Esseck 6 in Slavonia, which surrendered with about five thou- 
 sand men. About the same time Bern was driven from Bukowina, 
 and, after repeated disasters, from Transylvania also, the Saxons 
 and Wallachs, 8 who form, the bulk of the population, having joined 
 the Austrians. The Szeklers, however, a wild, restless, and warlike 
 race of southern Hungary, espousing the side of the Hungarians, 
 placed themselves under the command of Bern, who, thus reenforced, 
 was soon in a condition to resume the offensive. Again he entered 
 Transylvania, at the head of a well-disciplined corps of twenty thou- 
 sand men ; and although ten thousand Russian troops had crossed 
 the frontiers to aid the Austrians, he repeatedly defeated their united 
 forces, took Hermanstadt T after a severe battle, and entered Cron- 
 stadt 8 without opposition. In a few weeks Bern was complete master 
 
 1. Debreczin, the great mart for the produce of northern and eastern Hungary, is situated in 
 a flat, sandy, and arid plain, one hundred and fourteen miles east of Pesth. Population forty- 
 flve thousand. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Comorn, situated on a point of land formed by the confluence of the Waag and the Dan- 
 ube, is forty-six miles norlh-east of Buda. The citadel is one of the strongest fortresses in 
 Europe, and has never been taken. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. Eperies is a fortified town of Upper Hungary, on an affluent of the Theiss, one hundred 
 and forty miles north-east of Pesth. 
 
 4. Bukowina, ceded by the Turks to Austria in 1774, is now included in Galicia and Lodo- 
 meria. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 5. Esseck, (ancieut Mursia,) the capital of Slavonia, is a strongly-fortified town situated on 
 the Drave, thirteen miles from its confluence with the Danube. It is one hundred and thirty- 
 four miles south of Buda. Mursia, founded by the emperor Adrian, iu the year 125, became 
 the capital of Lower Pannonia. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 6. The Wallachs properly the inhabitants of the Turco-Rus*ian province of Wallachia, are 
 the descendants of the ancient Dacians. (Pronounced Wol'-laks: Wol-la'-ke-a.) 
 
 7. Hermanstadt, the capital of the " Saxon land," a Saxon portion of Transylvania, is situated 
 In an extensive and fertile plain, on a branch of the Aluta, in the southern part of Transyl- 
 vania. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 8. Cronstadt, the largest and most populous, as well as the principal manufacturing and 
 commercial town of Transylvania also in the " Saxon land" is seventy miles east of Her- 
 manstadt. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 7.
 
 554 MODERN HISTORY. [PAKT IL 
 
 of Trausylvania, from which he passed into the Banat, and captured 
 Temeswar, 1 its capital. 
 
 13. In the meantime important events had occurred in the valley 
 of the Theiss. About the first of February General Dembinski, 
 also a Pole, was invested, by Kossuth, with the command-in-chief of 
 the Hungarian armies. Although the appointment of Dembinski 
 aroused the jealousy of the native Hungarian officers, who seconded 
 him with little cordiality, yet his plan of operations was judicious. 
 Leaving strong garrisons at Szegedm* and on the Maros, 3 about the 
 middle of February he concentrated his forces in the upper valley 
 of the Theiss, to meet the Austrians, then advancing in full force 
 under Windischgratz. In the vicinity of Kapolua, 3 on the 26th and 
 27th, a severe battle was fought between forty thousand Hungarians 
 and sixty thousand Austrians, without any decisive result ; but had 
 it not been for the inactivity of Gorgey, who restricted himself to a 
 defensive position, the Austrians would have suffered a total defeat. 
 
 14. Early in March Dembinski resigned, and General Vetter was 
 appointed commander-in-chief of the Hungarian forces ; but owing 
 to the illness of Vetter the command soon devolved on Gorgey, 
 under whom was gained a series of victories by which the Austrians 
 were for a time driven out of Hungary. On the 4th of April Jella- 
 chich was defeated at Tapiobieske, 8 and on the 6th the corps of 
 Windischgratz at Godollo : s on the 9th Gorgey took Waitzen 3 by 
 storm : on the 19th the Ausrians were defeated in a desperate battle 
 at Nagy-Sarlo ; s and on the 20th Gorgey relieved the fortress of 
 Comorn, which the Austrians had closely besieged during several 
 months. In a few days the main body of the Austrians was driven 
 from the right bank of the Danube, when nothing but a routed army 
 remained between the Hungarians and the city of Vienna. Had 
 Gorgey then followed up his successes, as he was strongly urged 
 to do by Kossuth, in two days his forces might have bivouacked 
 in the Austrian capital ; but he remained inactive eight days at 
 Comorn, and then proceeded to the siege of the fortress of Buda,* 
 
 1. Temeswar, the capital of the Banat, is a strongly-fortified town, seventy-five miles north- 
 east of Peterwardein. It was taken from the Turks in 1716 by Prince Eugene. The Bega 
 canal, seventy-three miles in length, passes through the town. Temeswar is supposed to rep- 
 resent the ancient Tablscus, to which Ovid was banished. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Szeg-edin is a large town of Hungary, situated at the confluence of the Maros and the 
 Theiss, one hundred miles south-east of Pesth. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. For the river Maros, and the towns Kapolna, Tapiobieske, Godollo, Waitzen, and N&gy- 
 Sarlo, gee Map No. XVII. 
 
 4. Buda, situated on the right bank of the Danube, one hundred and thirty-five miles south
 
 CHAP. VL] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 555 
 
 which was carried by storm on the 21st of May. Buda was the bait 
 which the retreating army left behind them to lure the Hungarians ; 
 and its siege was the salvation of Vienna, and, perhaps, of the Aus- 
 trian empire. 
 
 15. On the 4th of March the Austrian emperor had made known 
 the project of a constitution for his empire, the effect of which would 
 have been to rob Hungary of her independence and constitutional 
 rights. This measure, in connection with the well-known fact that 
 Russia had been invoked to lend her aid in suppressing the Hungarian 
 rebellion, induced the Hungarian Diet to make, on the 14th of July, 
 1849, the declaration of Hungarian independence. The Diet also 
 decreed that, until the form of government to be adopted for the 
 future should be fixed by the nation, the government should be con- 
 ducted by Louis Kossuth and the ministers to be appointed by him. 
 Kossuth was thereupon unanimously declared governor of Hungary, 
 with little less than regal powers. 
 
 16. The demand which the Austrian emperor had made upon the 
 Czar for assistance was neither rejected nor delayed ; and prepara- 
 tions for a second campaign against Hungary were speedily com- 
 pleted. Four hundred thousand men, of whom one hundred and 
 sixty thousand were Russians, were assembled on the Hungarian 
 frontiers early in June, the whole being placed under the command- 
 in-chief of the Austrian general Haynau, of whom little was then 
 known, except that he had served under Radetsky in Italy, where he 
 had distinguished himself by his atrocities. To meet this force the 
 Hungarians had raised an army of one hundred and forty thousand 
 men, with four hundred pieces of artillery. Of these, forty-five thou- 
 sand, under the immediate command of Gorgey, were on the upper 
 Danube, between Presburg 1 and the capital. The other principal 
 divisions of the Hungarian forces consisted of thirty-five thousand 
 men under General Perczel in the Banat, thirty-two thousand under 
 General Bern in Transylvania, and twelve thousand under Dembinski 
 at Eperies, near the Galician frontier. 
 
 1 7. Almost simultaneously, in the early part of June, Haynau, at 
 the head of fifty thousand men, entered Hungary at Presburg ; 
 
 east of Vienna, is, in conjunction with Pesth, the capital of Hungary. Attila occasionally made 
 Buda his residence. Arpad, the Magyar chief, made it his head-quarters in the year 900 ; and 
 it then became the cradle of the Hungarian monarchy. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 1. Presburg, once the capital of Hungary, is on the north bank of the Danube, thirty-four 
 miles east of Vienna. The castle, now in ruins, is memorable as the scene of the appeal made 
 in 1741 by Maria Theresa to the Hungarian States, which was so generously responded to by 
 the latter. See p. 420. (Map No. XVII.)
 
 556 MODERN HISTORY. [PAUT H 
 
 Paskiewitch. at the head of eighty-seven thousand Russians, passed 
 tiis frontiers of Galicia, and descended into the valley of the Theiss 
 by way of Bartfeld 1 and Eperies ; and forty thousand Russians and 
 fourteen thousand Austrians entered Transylvania from the south 
 and east. Smaller divisions entered at other points the whole de- 
 signed to enclose the Hungarians within a circle of armies, in tho 
 plains of the Theiss and the Danube. 
 
 18. The plan of the Austriaus and Russians was too successfully 
 carried out. The Russians, after encountering a heroic resistance, 
 drove Bern from Transylvania : Jellachich, after experiencing the 
 most disastrous defea,t in the defile of Hegyes,* marched up the 
 Theiss : the Russians, under Paskiewitch, in two divisions entered 
 Debreczin on the 7th of July, and Pesth on the llth. Haynau 
 fought his way from Presburg to the vicinity of Comorn, near which 
 place he fought, on the llth of July, a severe battle with G-orgey, 
 in which the latter had the advantage. On the 19th he reached 
 Pesth, where he renewed those brutal scenes which had marked his 
 whole career in Hungary. To his own everlasting infamy, and the 
 deep disgrace of the Austrian government, he repeatedly ordered 
 ladies of great respectability and high rank to be publicly flogged 
 for having held communication with the insurgents, and one, the 
 daughter of a professor in Raab, for having turned her back upon 
 the emperor as he entered the city. Brave officers were hanged by 
 him for no other crime than that of defending their country. Hay- 
 nau, by his barbarities, fully earned the title which has been given 
 him, that of " Hungary's Hangman." 
 
 19. From Comorn, Gorgey, constantly harassed by the enemy, re- 
 treated to Waitzen, and thence to Onod, 3 and on the 29th crossed 
 the Theiss at Tokay, 4 from which place he turned south, and, pur- 
 sued by the enemy, continued his retreat, until, on the 8th of August, 
 
 1. Bartfeld is at the foot of the Carpathian mountains, in northern Hungary, on the Tope, an 
 affluent of the Theiss. It formerly enjoyed considerable distinction as a seat of learning. It is 
 one hundred and fifty-five miles north-east from Pesth. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Hegycs is a small town of Southern Hungary, thirty-five miles north-west of Peterwardein. 
 (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 3. Onod is on the western bank of the Theiss, ninety-five miles north-east of Pesth. (Map 
 No. XVII.) 
 
 4. Tokay is a small town, situated at the confluence of the Bodrog with the Theiss, one hun- 
 dred and thirteen miles north-east from Pesth. Tokay derives its whole celebrity from its being 
 the entrepot foi the sals of the famous sweet wine of the same name, made in a hilly tract of 
 country extend.ng twrntj-flve or thirty miles north-west from the town. The finest quality of 
 the wine is that which flofvs from the ripe grapes by their own pressure, while in heaps. (Map 
 No. XVII.)
 
 CHAP. VI] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 557 
 
 he reached the fortress of Arad, 1 on the Maros. Petty jealousie? 
 between the Hungarian generals frequently prevented concert of 
 action and a union of forces when the safety of whole armies depend- 
 ed upon it; and the ambition of Gorgey, in particular, who was 
 possessed of both skill and courage, seemed to be to show himself a 
 great general. His country's safety was a secondary consideration. 
 
 20. Dembinski, in the meantime, had retreated south, and crossed 
 the Danube also in the Banat. After almost constant fighting on 
 the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th of August, on the latter of which days he 
 was severely wounded, on the 9th his army, commanded by Bern, 
 fought with Jellachich and Haynau the decisive battle of Temeswar, 
 in which the Austrians were at first repulsed with great loss ; but 
 the failure of ammunition in the Hungarian lines finally gave the 
 victory to the Austrians. The southern Hungarian army was com- 
 pletely broken up by this disaster : many laid down their arms and 
 returned home : some escaped into Turkey ; and some thousands fell 
 into the hands of the pursuing enemy. On the 8th Gorgey had 
 reached' Arad with forty thousand troops, within half a day's march 
 of the spot where Dembinski was fighting ; but instead of joining his 
 countrymen at that opportune moment, when he might have turned 
 the scale of victory, he was then engaged in efforts for obtaining the 
 dissolution of the government, and procuring for himself the ap- 
 pointment of dictator. Gorgey's fidelity to the Hungarian cause had 
 long been suspected, even by Kossuth himself, yet he had been re- 
 tained in command of the largest division of the Hungarian army ; 
 and now, when he declared that he alone could and would save the 
 country if dictatorial powers were conferred upon him, Kossuth, 
 considering the cause of Hungary desperate, took the important step 
 of dissolving the government and conferring upon Gorgey the su- 
 preme civil and military power. (Aug. 10th.) 
 
 21. It soon appeared that Gorgey had long maintained a treason- 
 able correspondence with the enemy. He had long disobeyed, at his 
 pleasure, the orders sent him by the government ; and he now made 
 such a disposition of his forces that the Russians might enclose his army, 
 of which, in spite of its corrupt condition, he still stood in fear. On 
 the 13th he surrendered to the Russian general Rudiger, withut 
 any conditions,- his entire force, with one hundred and forty- four can- 
 nons. When the troops were drawn up for surrender, grief and in- 
 
 1. Ami. is a strongly-fortified town, situated on both sides of the Maros, twenty-seven miles 
 north of Temeswar. (Map No. X VIL)
 
 558 MODERN HISTORY. [PAET II 
 
 dignation were visible thro ighout the ranks : one officer broke his 
 sword, and threw it with curses at Gorgey's feet : many a hussar 
 shot his noble charger, that it might not survive the disgrace of its 
 master ; and some regiments burned their standards, determined 
 never to surrender them to the enemy. 
 
 22. A few days before Gorgey's treacherous surrender, one parting 
 gleam of success shed its lustre on the Hungarian arms. At mid- 
 night on the 3d of August the garrison of Comorn, commanded by 
 General Klapka, sallied from the fortress, and drove back the Aus- 
 trians with dreadful slaughter ; and so great was the panic that on 
 the 5th of August Raab 1 was taken, and with it supplies and ammu- 
 nition to the value of several millions of dollars. The peasantry in 
 the valley of the Danube rose en masse, and Klapka thought serious- 
 ly of marching upon Vienna itself, when the news of Gorgey's sur- 
 render paralyzed all farther effort. Comorn surrendered on the 29th 
 of September, on favorable terms ; and with the fall of that import- 
 ant fortress, terminated the military operations in Hungary. 
 
 23. After the surrender of Gorgey, Kossuth left Arad and direct- 
 ed his course to the Turkish frontier, and, finding that no hope re- 
 mained of serving his country, delivered himself up to the Ottoman 
 garrison at Widdin. 2 Austria in vaid demanded him of the Turkish 
 government. When he was finally permitted to leave the country 
 he came to the United States. The attentions there bestowed upon 
 him for his noble efforts in the cause of Hungarian freedom, called 
 forth, from the Austrian government, a remonstrance, which was 
 nobly answered by Mr. Webster, the American Secretary of State. 
 Bern also fled into Turkey, where, after receiving a command in the 
 Turkish army, he died in 1850, of wounds received in the Hungarian 
 war. Dembinski and a few others followed the fortunes of Kossuth. 
 
 24. On the 6th of October, 1849, a day rendered forever mem- 
 orable for infamy in the annals of Austria thirteen Hungarian 
 generals and staff officers, who had surrendered, were shot or hanged 
 at Arad : many of the Hungarian ministers and other civil officials 
 were also executed : an immense number of inferior officers were sent 
 to fortresses to be imprisoned for life, or a term of years ; and about 
 seventy thousand Hungarians, who had taken part in the contest, 
 
 1. Raab is situated south of the Danube, twenty-two miles south-west of Comorn. It was a 
 strong post under the Romans. In 1809 an Austrian force was routed by the French under its 
 walls. (Map No. XVII.) 
 
 2. Widdiu ia a fortified town of Bulgaria in Turkey, on the southern bank of the Danube, one 
 hundred and sixty-five mites so ith-east of Peterwardein. (Map No, \ll.)
 
 CHAP VI.] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 559 
 
 were forcibly enlisted in Austrian regiments. Thus terminated the 
 struggle of Hungary for freedom. Her national existence, preserved 
 through a thousand years, was annihilated, not so much by the over- 
 whelming power of two great empires, as by the faults and treason of 
 her own sons. a 
 
 VI. USURPATION OF Louis NAPOLEON. 1. After France had 
 adopted a republican constitution in 1848, the election of a chief 
 magistrate, to hold the executive power of the nation for four years, 
 became the absorbing subject of thought and discussion with the 
 French people. Six candidates were in the field, Lamartine, Ledru 
 Rollin, Baspail, Generals Changarnier and Cavaignac, and Louis Na- 
 poleon. Lamartine, who had saved the country from anarchy in the 
 Bevc^ition of February, but had made a feeble president of the pro- 
 visional government, soon virtually withdrew from the contest, by re- 
 questing his friends to make no efforts in his behalf: the adherents 
 of Ledru Eollin, although earnest and active, were, comparatively, 
 few in number : Kaspail and Changarnier possessed no peculiar rec- 
 ommendations for the office ; and it was soon evident that the choice 
 would lie between General Cavaignac and Louis Napoleon the 
 former, popular with the Assembly and the leading republicans, a 
 man of tried integrity, and possessing every requisite qualification 
 for the office the latter an adventurer, who had made two fool- 
 hardy attempts to usurp the throne of France, viewed with jealousy 
 and distrust by the republicans, and treated with coldness by the 
 politicians of all parties, but strong in the prestige of a name, 
 and hailed by the people as the living representative of that world- 
 renownod emperor whom France can never forget. The result of 
 the election surprised every one. Seven and a-half millions of votes 
 were polled in the nation, and, of these, five and a-half millions 
 were cast for Louis Napoleon, who was inaugurated President on 
 the 20th of December. He then solemnly swore " to remain faith- 
 ful to the Democratic Republic, and to fulfil all the duties which the 
 constitution imposed upon him." 
 
 2. Louis Napoleon, the son of Louis Bonaparte and Hortense 
 Beauharnais, the king and queen of Holland, was born in the palace 
 
 a. When Kossuth, with the members of the provisional government, was retreating from 
 point to point as the Austrian and Russian armies advanced, he carried with him the Hunga- 
 rian regalia the royal jewels, and the crown of St. Stephen objects of almost religious ven- 
 eration to the Hungarian people. It long remained a mystery what had become of them, but 
 after years of search by individuals sent out by the Austrian government, they were discovered 
 in Sept. 1853, buried in an iron chest near the confines of Wallachia.
 
 560 MODERN HISTORY. [PAKT IL 
 
 of the Tuilleries on the 20th of April, 1808, and, being the first 
 prince of the Napoleon dynasty born under the imperial regime, and 
 the only one living at the time of his election as President of the 
 French Republic, considered himself, and was acknowledged by the 
 Bonapartists, as the legitimate representative of the emperor Napo- 
 leon, and the heir to his empire. After his second attempt, in 
 August 1840, to excite a Revolution against Louis Phillippe, he was 
 confined in the castle of Ham, 1 from which he made his escape in 
 May 1846, after an imprisonment of more than five years. Being 
 in London at the time of the Revolution of February, 1848, he imme- 
 diately repaired to Paris, but was so coldly received by the members 
 of the provisional government that he again left the country. Soon 
 after he was informed that he had been elected a member of the As- 
 sembly from three different departments ; but the hostility against 
 him in the Assembly was so great that, deeming it unsafe to take 
 his seat as a delegate, he resigned the office. In the election to fill 
 vacancies, in August, he was ree'Jected, when he returned to France, 
 and on the 26th of September took his seat as the representative of 
 Paris, his native city. But even then, nearly all the members, re- 
 garding him as a secret enemy of the government, treated him with 
 marked coldness and neglect ; nor did the icy reserve wear away 
 when the suffrages of nearly six millions of his countrymen had 
 elevated him to the first place in the Republic. 
 
 3. The first act of Louis Napoleon was to make a public declara- 
 tion of the principles of his government, which he avowed to be 
 strictly republican ; yet from the outset it was assumed by a large 
 portion of the Assembly that he would prove unfaithful to his oath, 
 and endeavor to establish an imperial dynasty. The Assembly was 
 composed of several parties, first, the Legitimists, who were ad- 
 herents of the elder branch of the Bourbons : second, the Orlean- 
 ists, who desired to see the heir of Louis Phillippe raised to the 
 throne : third, the Republicans, both moderate and ultra ; and, 
 finally, the Bonapartists, who openly expressed their desire for the 
 restoration of the empire, and were encouraged by Louis Napoleon, 
 although he remained professedly attached to the Republic. 
 
 4. From the beginning there was no mutual confidence between 
 the President and the Assembly ; and while the conduct of the 
 
 1. Ham, celebrated for its strong fortress used as a State Prison, is a town in a marshy plain, 
 in the former province of Picardy, seventy miles north-east from Paris, and thirty -five south-east 
 from Amiens. Here Prince Polignac anl other ministers of Charles X. were confined for six 
 years.
 
 CHAP, VI] NINETEENTH CENTURY. 561 
 
 former exhibited marked dishonesty of purpose in furthering bia am- 
 bitious views, the whole career of the latter was a series of intrigues 
 against the President, of party contests, and encroachments upon 
 popular rights. The Assembly introduced severe restrictions upon 
 the liberty of the press : it placed the entire control of education in 
 the hands of the Roman Catholic clergy : it made restrictions upon 
 the right of suffrage, which disfranchised three millions of electors ; 
 and it united with the President in sending an army to crush the 
 rising Republic of Rome. 
 
 5. The constitution of 1848 provided that it might be revised by 
 a vote of three-fourths of the Assembly during the last year of the 
 Presidential term, and that the President should be ineligible to 
 reelection until after an interval of four years. This latter provision 
 would therefore render the continuance of Louis Napoleon in power 
 impossible, without a revision of the constitution. Early in 1851 the 
 question of revision was brought before the Assembly, and after 
 being the subject of some very exciting and stormy debates, in which 
 any change was vehemently opposed by the republicans, the motion 
 to revise failed by nearly a hundred votes. 
 
 G. In his annual message in November the President strongly urged 
 upon the Assembly the extension of the right of suffrage, a measure 
 which greatly increased his popularity with the French people ; but 
 the bill introduced for that purpose was rejected by the Assembly. 
 Soon after, the increasing animosity of the Assembly towards the 
 President was exhibited by the proposal of a law authorizing his 
 impeachment in case he should seek a reelection in violation of the 
 constitution. His accusation and arrest on a charge of treason were 
 also hinted at. 
 
 7. The strife of parties in the Assembly was fast bringing matters 
 to a crisis that would probably have ended in anarchy and civil war, 
 when suddenly unexpectedly and quietly, Louis Napoleon put 
 forth his hand, and with a degree of skill that would have done honor 
 to his great name-sake, grasped the reina of power, and, crushing the 
 constitution, overwhelmed all opposition to his will. On the night 
 of Monday, December 1st, the palace of the President was the scene 
 of a gay assemblage of the fashion and beauty of Paris ; and it was 
 remarked that the President was in the highest spirits, and unusually 
 attentive to his guests. On the following morning the inhabitants 
 of Paris awoke to find the city filled with troops, and every com- 
 manding position in the vicinity occupied by them, while the Presi- 
 z* 36
 
 562 MODERN HISTORY. [PART IL 
 
 Cent's decree, posted on every wall, announced the dissolution of the 
 National Assembly, the restoration of universal suffrage, and the es- 
 tablishment of martial law throughout Paris. The chief members 
 of the Assembly, together with Generals Cavaignac, Changarnier, 
 Lamoriciere, and others, had been seized in their beds, and were already 
 in prison : not a man was left of sufficient ability and popularity to 
 rally tlie people ; the cmip d'etat was entirely successful, arid Louis 
 Napoloon was absolute dictator of France. 
 
 8. On Tuesday the 2d of December about three hundred members 
 of the Assembly, finding the doors of the hall of legislation guarded, met 
 in another part of the city, declared the President guilty of treason, 
 and proclaimed his deposition ; but scarcely had they signed the 
 decree when they were surrounded by a band of soldiers, and all 
 marched to prison. The Assembly being destroyed, measures were 
 next taken to disarm the power of the press ; and none of the jour- 
 nals, except the government organs, were allowed to appear. On 
 Wednesday, the 3d, a decree was promulgated, convening the whole 
 people for an election to be held between the 14th and 22d of De- 
 cember the questions submitted to them being whether Louis Na- 
 poleon should remain at the head of the state ten years, or not, with 
 the power of forming a new constitution on the basis of universal 
 suffrage. On Thursday, the 4th, troops were called out to suppress 
 an insurrection in Paris : no quarter was given, and about a thousand 
 of the insurgents were killed, when tranquillity was restored. In 
 some of the departments the people rose in great strength against 
 the usurpation ; but the army remained faithful, and in the course 
 of two or three days all resistance was quelled. 
 
 9. It had been arranged that the army should vote first on the 
 great question submitted to the nation ; and, as had been anticipated, 
 its vote was nearly unanimous in favor of Louis Napoleon. The 
 official returns showed nearly seven and a half millions of votes in 
 his favor, and but little more than half a million against him. Thus 
 the nation sanctioned his usurpation of the 2d of December, and 
 virtually proclaimed its wish for the restoration of the empire. On 
 the 1st of January, 1852. the result of the election was celebrated at 
 Paris with more than royal magnificence, and on the 14th the new 
 constitution was decreed. It was avowedly based on the constitution 
 which the emperor Napoleon had given to the French nation. It 
 intrusted the government to Louis Napoleon for ten years, made 
 him commander-in-clrief of the army and navy, gave him control over 
 legislation, and the'power to declare war and make treaties. He was 
 all but in name an emperor ; and before a year had passed he assumed 
 that title, apparently with the consent, and by the desire, of the na- 
 tion. France had accepted the Napoleon Dynasty as a refuge from 
 anarchy as the only compromise between Bourbonism, or the past, 
 and Republicanism, or the future.
 
 GENERAL GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL VIEWS, 
 
 (IN ADDITION TO THE NOTES THROUGHOUT THE WORK.) 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY THE FOLLOWING MAPS. 
 
 PA.OE MAP No. 
 
 ANCIENT GREECE 564 I. 
 
 ATHENS AND ITS HARBORS 566 IL 
 
 ISLANDS OF THE AEGEAN SEA 568 III. 
 
 ASIA MINOR .*. 570 IV. 
 
 PERSIAN EMPIRE 572 V. 
 
 PALESTINE 574 VL 
 
 TURKEY IN EUROPE 576 VH. 
 
 ANCIENT ITALY 578 VHI. 
 
 ROMAN EMPIRE 580 IX. 
 
 ANCIENT ROME 582 X. 
 
 CHART OF THE WORLD 584 XI. 
 
 BATTLE GROUNDS OF NAPOLEON, &c 586 XIL 
 
 FRANCE, SPAIN, AND PORTUGAL 588 XIIL 
 
 SWITZERLAND, DENMARK, &c 590 XIV. 
 
 NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND AND BELGIUM) 592 XV. 
 
 GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 594 XVL 
 
 CENTRAL EUROPE 596 XVIL 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMBR13A... .. 598 .. .. XVEB.
 
 ASC1EXT AND MODERN GREECE. Map No. I. 
 
 A general description of both Ancient and Modern Greece may be found on pp. 21 and 2s{ 
 Grecian Mythology, -J'-i lo "7 Ancient History ef Greece, 5f7 lo 1'-'.'! Alodern History, 51(i to 
 5it. For descriptive accounts of the Grecian States, and important lowns, cities, rivers, battle- 
 grounds, ,;;., see the '-Index to the Descriptive Notes" at the end of the volume. 
 
 The following is a brief synopsis of the leading events in Grecian History, beginning with 
 Ihe Per::iii wars, which ended B. C. 4t>'J. The Peloponiiesiau wars lasted nearly thirty years, 
 T. ',;. -131-4 .!*. isiibjugation of Greece by Philip of iMaeedon, B. C. a:w, afler which come the 
 i-.onquesls of Alexander, Ihe Acliiean League, and then I he Hoinan conquest, B. (J. 14l>, from 
 which tim?, during thirteen hundred and Jifiy years, Greece coniiniied 10 be either really or 
 nominally a portion of the Human empire. The country was invaded by Alaric the Goih, 
 A. 1) 400, and afterwards by Genseric and Zaber Khan, in I be sixth and seventh, and by the 
 Normans ill the eleventh century. Afler the capture of Constantinople by the crusaders in 
 lii()4, Giecce was divided into feudal principalities, and governed by a variely of Norman, Ve- 
 netian, and I'rankish nobles. It was invaded by the Turks in 143d, and conquered by them in 
 l-Wl. It was luo I heal re of wars between the Turks and Venetians during Ihe sixicenlh and 
 seventeenth centuries; but by the treaty of Passarovitch, in 1718, it was given up to the Turks, 
 who retained possession of ihi- country lill the breaking out of the Greek Revolution in 18^1. 
 
 The present kingdom of Greece embraces all the Grecian peninsula south of the ancient 
 Kpirus ii'.d Thes' saly, as seen on Ihe accompanying map, together with Kubte'a, theCyc' lades, 
 Jind the northern Spor' ades. Thes' saly, now a Turkish province, retains ils ancient name and 
 limits: Epirus is embraced in the Turkish province of Albania, for which, see Map No. VII. 
 
 The .Modern Greeks are described as being, generally, " rather above the middle height, 
 jiud well-shaped; they have the lace oval, features regular and expressive, eyes large, (lark, 
 and animated, eyebrows arched, hair long and dark, and complexions olive colored." They 
 retain many of the customs and ceremonies of the aneU-nls ; Ihe common people are extremely 
 credulous and superstitious, and pay much attention to auguries, omens, and dreams. They 
 in-long mostly to the Greek Church ; they deny the supremacy ol the pope, abhor the worship 
 of images, and reject the doctrine of purgatory, but believe in transubstantiation. Theories!* 
 re generally poor and illiterate, although improving ill their attainments; and their bubils arc 
 generally simple and exemplary. 
 
 The inhabitants of Northern Greece, or Hellas, are said to have retained "a chivalrous and 
 warlike spirit, with a simplicity of manners and mode of life which strongly remind u of the 
 pictures of the heroic age." The inhabitants of the Peloponnesus are more ignorant and less 
 honest than those of Hellas. Previous to the Greek Revolution, remains of the Hellenic race 
 were found, in their greatest purity, in the mountainous parts of the country in the vicinity 
 of Mount Parnassus iu Northern Greece, and the inhospitable tracts of Taygeios in Southern 
 Greece, whither they had been driven from the plains by their ruthless oppressors. The 
 language of the modern Greeks bears, in many ol its words, and in its general forms and 
 grammatical structure, a strong resemblance to the ancient Greek similar to the rotation su.s- 
 Umed by the Italian lo the Latin; but as the pronunciation of the ancient Greek is lost, how 
 far the modern tongue corresponds to it in that particular cannot be ascertained. 
 
 Travellers still speak iu the highest terms of the tine views every where found in Grecian scene- 
 ry ; and besides their natural beauties, they are doubly dear to us by the thousand hallowed asso- 
 ciations connected with them by scenes of historic interest, and by the numerous ruins ot 
 ancient art and splendor which cover the country recalling a glorious Past, upon which we 
 love to dwell as upon the memory of departed friends, or the scenes of happy childhood- 
 "swact, but mournful, to the soul." 
 
 "Vet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild; 
 Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy Held?, 
 Thine olive ripe as when Minerva srnV'cd, 
 And stiil his honied wealth Hymettus yields. 
 There Ihe blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds. 
 The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain air; 
 Apollo still thy long, long summer gilcis, 
 Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare; 
 Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair. 
 
 "Where'er we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground; 
 No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould, 
 Bat one vast realm of wonder spreads around, 
 And all the muses tales seem truly told, 
 Till the sense aches with gazing to behold 
 The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon : 
 Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold, 
 Defies the power which crush'd thy temples gone : 
 Age shakes Athena'a tower, but spares gray Marathon." 
 
 Childe Harulde, cauto ii.
 
 NO. I.
 
 ANCIENT ATHENS, Map No. II. 
 
 Atnong the monuments of antiquity which still exist at A hens, the most striking are those 
 which surmount the Acrop' olis, or Cecropian citadel, which is a rocky height rising abruptly 
 out of the Attic plain, and accessible only on the western side, where stood the Propyla'a, a 
 magnificent structure of the Doric order, which served as the gate as well as the defence of 
 the Acrop' olis. But the chief glory of Athens was the Par' thenon, or temple of Minerva, 
 which stood on the highest point, and near the centre, of the Acrop' olis. It was constructed 
 entirely of the most beautiful white marble from Mount Pentel' licus, and its dimensions were 
 two hundred and twenty-eight feet by one hundred and two having eight Doric columns In 
 each of the two fronts, and seventeen in each of the sides, and also an interior range of six 
 columns in each end. The ceiling of the western part of the main building was supported by 
 four interior columns, and of the eastern end by sixteen. The entire height of the building 
 above its platform was sixty-five feet. The whole was enriched, within and without, with 
 matchless works of art by the first sculptors of Greece. This magnificent structure remained 
 entire until the year 1037, when, during a siege of Athens by the Venetians, a bomb fell on the 
 devoted Par' thenon, and setting fire to the powder which the Turks had stored there, entirely 
 destroyed the roof, and reduced the whole building almost to ruins. The eight columns of the 
 eastern front, however, and several of the lateral colonnades, are still standing, and the whole, 
 dilapidated as it is, still retains an air of inexpressible grandeur and sublimity. 
 
 North of the Par' thenon stood the Erecht/ieium, an irregular but beautiful structure of the 
 Ionic order, dedicated to the worship of Neptune and Minerva. Considerable remains of it 
 are still existing. In addition to the three great edifices of the Acrop' olis, which were adorned 
 with the most finished paintings and sculptures, the entire platform of the hill appears to have 
 been covered with a vast composition of architecture and sculpture, consisting of temples, 
 monuments, and statues of Grecian gods and heroes. Among these may be mentioned statues 
 of Jupiter, Apollo, Neptune, Mercury, Venus, and Minerva ; and a vast number of statues of 
 eminent Grecians the whole Acrop' olis having been at once the fortress, the sacred enclosure, 
 and the treasury of the Athenian nation, and forming the noblest museum of sculpture, the 
 richest gallery of painting, and the best school of architecture in the world. 
 
 Beneath the southern wall of the Acrop' olis, near its eastern extremity, was the Theatre of 
 Bacchus, which was capable of containing thirty thousand persons, and whose seats, rising one 
 above another, were cut out of the sloping rock. Adjoining this on the east was the Odeum 
 built by Pericles, and beneath the western extremity of the Acrop' olis was the Odeum or 
 Musical Theatre, constructed in the form of a tent. On the north-east side of the Acrop' olis stood 
 the Prytaneum, where were many statues, and where citizens who had rendered service to the 
 State were maintained at the public expense. A short distance to the north-west of the 
 Acrop' olis was the small eminence called Areop' agus, or hill of Mars, at the eastern extremity 
 of which was situated the celebrated court of the Areop' agus. About a quarter of a mile 
 south-west stood the Pnyx, the place where the public assemblies of Athens were held in its 
 palmy days, a spot that will ever be associated with the renown of Demosthenes, and other famed 
 Athenian orators. The steps by which the speaker mounted the rostrum, and a tier of three 
 seats for the audience, hewn in the solid rock, are still visible. A short distance south of the 
 Pnyx was the eminence called the Museum, that part of Athens where the poet Musasus is said 
 to have been buried. 
 
 In the Ceramicus, north and west of the Acrop' olis, one of the most considerable parts of the 
 ancient city, were many public buildings, some dedicated to the worship of the gods, others 
 used for stores, and for the various markets, and some for schools, while the old Forum, often 
 used for large assemblies of the people, occupied the interior. North of the Areop' agus is the 
 Temple of Theseus, built of marble by Cimou. The roof, friezes, and cornices, of this temple, 
 have been but little impaired by time, and the whole is one of the most noble remains of the 
 ancient magnificence of Athens, and the most perfect, if not the most beautiful, existing 
 tpecimen of Grecian architecture. 
 
 South-east of the Acrop' olis, and near the Ilissus, is now to be seen a cluster of sixteen mag- 
 nificent Corinthian columns of Pentelic marble, the only remaining ones of a hundred ami 
 twenty, which mark the site of the Temple of Jupiter Olympius. On the left bank of the 
 Ilissus was the Stbdivm, used for gymnastic contests, and capable of accommodating twenty-five
 
 so. n.
 
 568 
 
 thousand persons. The marble seats have disappeared, but the masses of masonry which 
 formed the semi-circular end still remain. 
 
 Just without the ancient city walls on the east was the Lyceum, embellished with buildings, 
 proves, and fountains, a place of assembling for military and gymnastic exercises, and a 
 favorite resort for philosophical study and contemplation. Near the foot of Mount Anohesmus 
 was the Cynosar' gea, a place adorned with several temples, a gymnasium, and groves sacred to 
 Hercules. Beyond the walls of the city on the north was the Academy, or Public Garden, 
 surrounded with a wall, and adorned with statues, temples, and sepulchres of illustrious men, 
 and planted with olive and plane trees. Within this enclosure Plato possessed a small garden, 
 in which he opened his school. Thence arose the Academic sect. 
 
 Athens had three great harbors, the Pinfi' us, Munych' ia, and Phal' erum. Anciently these 
 porta formed a separate city larger than Athens itself, with which they were connected by 
 means of two long walls. During the prolonged conflict of the revolutionary war in Greece, 
 from 1820 to 1827, Athens was in ruins, but it is the now capital of the kingdom of Greece. 
 
 The philosophical era in the history of Athens has been beautifully alluded to by Milton. 
 
 "See there the olive grove of Academe, 
 Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird 
 Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer-long : 
 There flowery hill Ilymettus with the sound 
 Of bees' industrious murmur oft invites 
 To studious musing; There Ilissus rolls 
 His whispering stream : within the walls then view 
 The schools of ancient sages ; his who bred 
 Great Alexander to subdue the world, 
 Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next ; 
 * * 4 * ' 
 
 To sage philosophy next lend thine ear, 
 From Heaven descended to the low-roofed house 
 Of Socrates ; see there his tenement, 
 Whom, well inspired, the oracle pronounced 
 Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth 
 Mellifluous streams that water'd all the schools 
 Of Academics old and new, with those 
 Surnarned Peripatetics, and the sect 
 Epicurean, and the Stoic severe." 
 
 ISLANDS OP THE AEGEAN, Map No. III. 
 
 The AEGEAN SEA, now called the Archipelago, is that part of the Mediterranean lying between 
 Greece, the islands Crete and Rhodes, and Asia Minor. It embraces those groups of Islands, 
 the Cyc' lades and the Spor' ades ;* also Eubce'a, Lesbos, Chios, Teuedos, Lemnos, &c., nearly 
 all of which cluster with interesting classical associations. Mentioning only the most important 
 in history, and beginning in the northern Archipelago, we have Tliasos, now Theso or Tasso, 
 early colonized by the Phcenicians on account of its valuable silver mines: Samot/trace, where 
 the mysteries of Cybele, the "Mother of the Gods," are said to have originated: Lemnos, 
 known in ancient mythology as the spot on which Vulcan fell, alter being hurled down from 
 heaven, and where he established his forge: Tcncdos, whither the Greeks retired, as Virgil 
 relates, in order to surprise the Trojans: Lesbos, celebrated for its olive oil and figs, and as 
 being the abode of pleasure and licentiousness, while the inhabitants boasted a high degree of 
 intellectual cultivation, and, especially, great musical attainments : Chios, now Scio, called the 
 garden of the Archipelago, and claimed to have been the birthplace of Homer: Samos, early 
 distinguished in the maritime annals of Greece for its naval ascendency, and for its splendid 
 temple of Juno' :lcaria, whose name mythology derives from Ic' arus. who fell into the sea near 
 the island after the unfortunate termination of his flight from Crete: Patmos, to which St. 
 John was banished, and where he wrote his Apocalypse: Cos, celebrated for its temple of 
 jEsculapius, and as being the birthplace of Hippocrates, the greatest physician of antiquity : 
 JVisyrus, said to have been separated from Cos by Neptune, that he might hurl it against the 
 
 * The division between the Cyc' lades and Spor' ades, on the accompanying Map, should 
 Include the islands jlscania, T/iera, and Mnap/te, among the latter.
 
 No. III.
 
 570 
 
 Ifiant Po ybae' tes :-?' ap/ie, said to liave been made to rise by thunder from the bottom of 
 the sea, in order to receive the Argonauts during a storm, on their return from Colchis: 
 T/tera, now called Santorin, said to have been formed in the sea by a clod of earth thrown from 
 the ship Argo -.jlstypala'a, called also Trapedza, or the " Table of the Gods," because its soil 
 was fertile, and almost enamelled with flowers: Amorgiis, the birthplace of the Iambic poet 
 Shnon'ides: las, claimed to have been the burial place of Homer: Jlfelos, now Milo, cele- 
 brated for its obstinate resistance to the Athenians, and its cruel treatment by them, (see p. 
 83) :j?ntiparos, celebrated for its grotto, of great depth and singular beauty: Paros, famed 
 for its beautiful and enduring marble: Naxos, the largest of the Cyc' lades, celebrated for the 
 worship of Bacchus, who is said to have been born there : Serijihus, celebrated in mythology 
 as the scene of the most remarkable adventures of Perseus, who changed Polydec'tes, king of 
 this island, and his subjects, into stones, to avenge the wrongs offered to his mother Dante : 
 Delos, (a small island between Rhenea and Mycanos,) celebrated as the natal island of Apollo 
 and Diana : Ceos, the birthplace .of the Elegiac poet Simonides, grandson of the poet of 
 Amorgus. The Simonides of Ceos was the author of the celebrated inscription on the tomb 
 of the Spartans who fell at Thermopylie : " Stranger, tell the Lar,cda>monia.ns that we are 
 lying here in obedience to their laws." .^Egina, Salamis, Crete, Rhodes, &c., have been de- 
 scribed in other parts of this work. See Index, p. 840. 
 
 ASIi MINOR, Map No. IV. 
 
 ASIA MINOR, or Lesser Asia, a celebrated region of antiquity, embraced the great peninsula 
 of Western Asia, about equal in area to that of Spain, and bounded north by the Black Sea, 
 east by Armenia and the Euphrates, south by Syria and the Mediterranean, and west by the 
 Euxine Sea or Archipelago. The divisions by which it is best known in history are the nine 
 coast provinces, Cilicia, Pamphylia, and Lycia, on the Mediterranean ; Caria, Lydia, and 
 Mysia, on the jEgean ; Bithynia, Paphlagonia, and Pontus, on the Euxine ; and the four in- 
 terior provinces, Galatia. Cappadocia, Phrygia, and Pisidia. All of these were, at times, inde- 
 pendent kingdoms, and at others, dependent provinces. 
 
 The most renowned of the early kingdoms of Asia Minor was that of Lydia, situate between 
 the waters of the Henmis and the Rheander, and bounded on the east by Phrygia. Under the 
 last of its kings, the famous Cro3sus, renowned for his wealth and munificence, the Lydian 
 kingdom was extended so as to embrace the Grecian colonies on the Euxine coast, and nearly 
 all Asia Minor as far as the Halys. On the overthrow of Croesus by Cyrus the Persian, B. C. 
 566, the Lydian kingdom was formed into three satrapies belonging to the Medo-Persian em- 
 pire, under which it remained upward of two centuries. The Macedonian succeeded the Per- 
 sian dominion, B. C. 331, from which time, during nearly two' centuries, Asia Minor was subject 
 to many vicissitudes consequent on the changing fortunes of Alexander's successors. During 
 the century immediately preceding the Christian era, the western provinces of the peninsula 
 fell successively into the hands of the Romans, under whom they formed what was called the 
 proconsulship of Asia, (see Map No. IX.,) the same which the Greek writers of the Roman era 
 call Asia Proper, and in which sense we find the word Asia used in (he New Testament, 
 (Acts, 2 : 9,) although in some passages Phrygia is spoken of as distinct from Asia. (Acts, 1C : 6, 
 and Revelations.) The decline of the Roman power exposed the peninsula to fresh invasions 
 from the East ; and at the period of the first crusade the Mohammedans had spread over almost 
 the whole peninsula. Asia Minor now constitutes a pachalick of Asiatic Turkey, under the 
 name of Natolia, or Jlnatolia a corruption of a Greek word, (avaraXtj,) meaning the East, 
 corresponding to the French word Levant. 
 
 The Greek colonists of Asia Minor, who spread themselves along the coast from the Euxine 
 to Syria, were at least equal, in commercial activity, refinement, and the cultivation of the arts, 
 to their European brethren. Among the Grecian poets, philosophers, and historians of Asia 
 Minor, we may mention, in poetry, Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, and Alcseus ; in philosophy, 
 Thfcles, Pythag'oras, and \naxag' oras ; and in history, Herod' otiis, Ctesias, and Dionysius of 
 HalicarnH8sus. Anatolia is now occupied by a mixed population of Turks and Greeks, Arme- 
 nians and Jews ; besides wandering tribes of Kurds and Turcomans in the interior, engaged 
 partly in pastoral, and partly in marauding occupations.
 
 No. IV.
 
 PERSIAN EMPIRE, Map No. V. 
 
 Ami* NT PERSIA comprehended, in its utmost extent, all the countries between the rner 
 Indus and the Mediterranean, and from the Euxiue and Caspian Seas to the Persian Gulf and 
 Indian Ocean; but in its more limited acceptation it denoted a particular province, bounded 
 on the north by Media and Parthia, on the east by Carmania, on the south by the Persian (iulf, 
 and on the west by Susiana. (See Map.) This was the original seat of the conquerors of 
 Asia. 
 
 Great obscurity rests on the early history of the nations embraced within the limits of the 
 Persian empire ; but about the middle of the sixth century B. C., Cyrus, supposed by some to 
 have been grandson of Astyages, the last Median monarch, being elected leader of the Persian 
 hordes, became, by their assistance, a powerful conqueror, at a time when the Median and 
 Babylonian kingdoms were on the decline, and on their ruins founded the Persian empire, 
 which properly dates from the capture of Babylon, B. C. 536. Cambyses, generally supposed 
 to be. the Ahasuerus of Scripture, succeeded Cyrus ; then followed the brief reign of the 
 usurper Smerdis, after whom Darius Hyslaspes was elevated to the throne, 521 B. C. Darius was 
 both a legislator and conqueror, and his long and successful reign exerted a powerful influence 
 over the destinies of Western Asia. Under his rule the Persian empire attained its greatest 
 extent. (See Map.) His vast realm he divided into twenty satrapies or provinces, c.nd ap- 
 pointed the tribute which each was to pay ; but his government was little more than an or- 
 ganized system of taxation. The attempts of Darius to reduce Greece to his sway were de- 
 feated, at Marathon ; V 'B. C. 490 ;) and the mighty arui;uiiunt of Xerxes, his son and successor, 
 was destroyed in the battles of Sal' amis, Platae'a, and Myc' ale. The Medo-Persian empire 
 itself was finally overthrown by Alexander the Great, in the battle of Arbela, B. C. 31)1. 
 
 The Macedo-Grecian kingdom of Alexander succeeded to the vast Persian domains, with 
 the additional provinces of Greece, Thrace, and Macedon thus exceeding the Persian kingdom 
 in extent. About the middle of the third century B. C., the Parthians, under Arsaces, one of 
 their nobles, arose against the successors of Alexander, and established the Parthian empire, 
 which, under its sixth monarch, Mithridates I., attained its highest grandeur extending from 
 the Euphrates to the Indus. (See Part/iia, p. 179.) The Parthian empire lasted nearly four 
 hundred and eighty years from B. C. 250 to A. D. 2;!6, at which latter period the Persians 
 proper, taking advantage of the weakened state of the empire under the Scleucidie, rebelled, 
 and founded a new dynasty, that of the Sassanidce. (See Note, Persian History, p. 249.) The 
 Persian empire under the Sassanidce continued until the year 636, when it was overthrown by 
 the Moslems in the great battle of the Cadesiah. (See p. 249.) Persia then continued a province 
 of the caliphs for more than two centuries, when the sceptre was wrested from them by the 
 chief of a bandit tribe. After this period Persia was wasted, for many centuries, by foreign 
 oppression and internal disorder, (see pp. 287311351,) when, toward the end of the sixteenth 
 century, order was restored, and Persia again rose to distinction under the government of Shah 
 Abbas, surnamed the Great, (p. 351.) 
 
 The present kingdom of Persia is reduced to the limits of the ancient provinces of Persia, 
 Media, Carraania, Parthia, the country of the Matieni, and the southern coasts of the Caspian 
 Sea. The Turkish territories extend some distance east of the Tigris ; Russia is in possession 
 of the country between the Euxine or Black and Caspian Seas, embracing a part of Armenia ; 
 and on the east the now independent but constantly changing kingdoms of Cabool and Belo- 
 chistan embrace the ancient Bactria, India, and Gedrosia, together with parts of Margiana and 
 Aria, (now eastern Khorassan,) and the country of the ancient Sarangsei. The present Persia 
 has an area of four hundred and fifty thousand square miles, with a population of eight or ten 
 millions. The most striking physical features of Persia are its chains of rocky mountains ; ita 
 long arid valleys without rivers ; and its vast salt or sandy deserts. The population is a mixture 
 of the ancient Persian stock with Arabs and Turks. The language spoken is the Parsee^- 
 simple in structure, and, like the French and English, having few inflections. The religion 01 
 the country is Mohammedanism (of the Sheah sect, or adherents of Ali,) which seems, hon 
 ever, to be rapidly on the decline.
 
 No. V.
 
 PALESTINE. Map No. VI. 
 
 A brief geographical account of PALESTINE has been already given on page 40: gcconnU 
 of the Moabites, Caiiaanites, Midianites, Philistines, Ammonites, and of the Jordan, Jabesb- 
 Gilead, Gilgal, Gath, Gilboa, Hebron, Tyre, Sidon, Joppa, Syria, Damascus, Kabbah, Edom, 
 Samaria, Gaza, Bethoron, Mount Tabor, &c., may be found by referring to the Index at the end 
 of the volume. 
 
 Joshua divided Palestine, or the Holy Land, among the twelve Israelitish tribes, whose 
 localities may be learned from the accompanying map. The Children of Israel remained 
 united under one government until the death of Solomon, when ten of the twelve tribes, under 
 Jeroboam, rebelled against Rehoboam, the son and successor of Solomon. The tribe of Judah, 
 with a part, and part only, of the little clan of Benjamin, remained faithful to Rehoboam. 
 From this time forward Judah and Israel were separate kingdoms. The dividing line was 
 about ten miles north of Jerusalem, between Jericho and Gibeah, the former belonging to 
 Israel, the latter to Judah. Edom, or Idumea, and the possession of the capital, Jerusalem, 
 therefore fell to Judah ; but four-fifths of the territory, and the sovereignty over the Moabites, 
 belonged to Israel. The Syrians (Aramites) and Ammonites, after this, were no longer under 
 subjection. 
 
 The history of ISRAEL from the time of Jeroboam to the carrying away of the ten tribes 
 captive to Assyria, (B. C. 721,) was a series of calamities and revolutions. The reigns of its 
 seventeen princes average only fifteen years each ; and these seventeen kings belonged to seven 
 different families, which were placed on the throne by seven sanguinary conspiracies. With 
 the captivity, the history of the ten tribes ends. Josephus assures us that they never returned 
 to their own land. 
 
 The history of JUDAH, after the revolt of the ten tribes, is little more than the history of a 
 single town, Jerusalem. After the lapse of three hundred and eighty-nine years Jerusalem was 
 taken by Nebuchadnezzar, (B. C. 600, and afterwards, B. C. 587,) and Judea became tributary 
 to the king of Babylon. The termination of the captivity of Judah, after a period of seventy 
 years, was the act of Cyrus, soon after the conquest of Babylon, B. C. 530; but it was a com- 
 mon saying among the Jews, that " only the bran, that is, the dregs of the people, returned to 
 Jerusalem, but that all the fine flour stayed behind at Babylon." At the time of the Persian 
 conquest by Alexander, Judea, along with the rest of the Persian provinces, passed under the 
 Macedonian dominion. After the death of Alexander we find Palestine alternately subject to 
 the kings of Syria and Egypt ; about the middle of the second century B. C., Judea was rendered 
 independent by the Maccabees, (pp. 112114,) and in the year 63 B. C. it was conquered by 
 Pompey, when it became a part of the Roman empire. (See p. 177.) 
 
 Under the Roman dominion, Palestine was divided into five provinces, viz. : Upper and 
 Lower Galilee, Samaria, Judea, and Perasa, situated as follows : The divisions of Asher and 
 Naphtali, (see Map,) embracing the country of the Sidonians, formed Upper Galilee ; the 
 tribes of Zebulun and Issachar, embracing the country of the Perizites, formed Lower Galilee; 
 the half tribe of Manasseh west of the Jordan, and the tribe of Ephraim, embracing the 
 country of the Hivites, formed Samaria; the tribes of Benjamin, Judah, and Simeon, em- 
 bracing the countries of the Jebusites, Amorites, Hittites, and Philistines, formed Judea ; the 
 tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh east of the Jordan, embracing the 
 countries of the Moabites and Ammonites, and the kingdom of Bashan, formed Persea. 
 
 Palestine remained under the Roman dominion (part of the time under the Eastern or 
 Greek empire) until the year 630, when Omar conquered Jerusalem, (see p. 249:) after being 
 more than four hundred years subject to the Arabian caliphs, the country fell into the hands 
 of the Turks, (see p. ~08,) who proved more oppressive masters than any of their predecessors. 
 Then followed the Crusades ; and about four hundred and sixty years after the conquest of 
 Omar, the Holy cily was rescued from the Mohammedan yoke, (see p. 283 ;) but after a series 
 of changes, in the year 1519 Jerusalem came finally into the hands of the Turks, whose flag has 
 ever since floated over its sacred places. 
 
 The inhabitarts of Palestine are a mixture of various races consisting of the > lescendanU 
 of the ancient inhabitants of the country, their Arab conquerors, Turks, Crusaders, wandering 
 Bedouins, Kurds, &c., but all now equally naturalized, and distributed into various classes or 
 tribes according to their several religio'is systems.
 
 Ko. VI. 
 
 TLEphn/im 
 FIT Dan 
 'i'JUBenjnm in U 
 
 VtbsaCsaalrW* 
 
 Jfa'ffiatfi -dm in on 
 (fliiiac/efpJiia) 
 
 112 ^Easlfr-orn7f?ts/iinaton.. Hi, M iHTo
 
 TURRET IN EUROPE, Map No. VII. 
 
 EUROPEAN TURKEY, including Moldavia, Wallachia, and Servia, which are connacted w.th 
 the Porte only by the slenderest ties, is bounded on the north by Slnvonia, Hungary, and 
 Tiacsylvania divisions of the A-ustrian empire from which it is separaled by the Save, the 
 Danube, and the eastern Carpathian mountains ; on the north-east it is separated from the 
 Russian province of Bessarabia by the Pruth ; on the east it has the Black Sea, the Bosporus, 
 the Sea of Marmora, and the Hellespont; on the south the Archipelago and Greece; and on 
 the west, the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, and the Austrian province of Dalmatia. Area of 
 European Turkey about two hundred and ten thousand square miles ; population about fifteen 
 millions. 
 
 The leading evetns in the history of European Turkey may be stated as follows : Tlfe ancient 
 Byzanteuin founded by Byzas the Megarean, B. C. 056 : destroyed by Septimius Severus in his 
 contest with Niger, A. D. 196: rebuilt by Constantino, who gave it his own name, aad 
 made it the capital of the Roman empire, A. D. 323 : captured in 120-1 by the Crusaders, 
 who retained it till 12(il : taken in 1453 by the Turks, who thus put an end to the Eastern or 
 Greek empire, and (irmly established their power in Europe. The Turkish arms continue to 
 maintain their ascendency over those of Christendom until their check in 1083 by the famous 
 John Sobieski, in the siege of Vienna. (See p. 389.) Then began the decline of the Ottoman 
 power: it received a severe blow by the victories of Prince Eugene in 1097, (see p. 390;) binee 
 which period province after province has been dismembered from the empire, which, during 
 the last century, has been saved from dissolution only by the mutual jealousies and animosities 
 of its Christian neighbors. 
 
 The divisions by which European Turkey is best known in history are Rumilia, Bulgaria, 
 Moldavia, Wallachia, Servia, Bosnia, Turkish Croatia, Herzegovina, Albania, Thcssaly, and 
 Macedonia, for which, see the accompanying Map. Rumilia, bordering on the Black Sea, the 
 Sea of Marmora, and the Archipelago, containing the cities of Adrianople and Constantinople, 
 and watered by the Maritza, the ancient Hebrus, is coterminous with the ancient Thrace, 
 (p. 71.) Bulgaria, separated from Rumilia by the Balkan range of mountains, having Sophia 
 lor its capital, and the Danube for its northern boundary, corresponds to the ancient Muesia 
 Inferior, (p. 20;).) Moldavia and Wallachia, separated from Transylvania by the Carpathian 
 mountains, correspond to the ancient Dacia conquered by Trajan, (p. 200-3.) The inhabitants, 
 descendants of the ancient Dacians, call themselves Roumuni, or Romans. Servia, peopled by 
 Slavonians corresponding to the ancient Moesia Superior, formed an independent kingdom in 
 the Middle Ages. It was conquered by the Turks in 1365 ; but since that period it has fre- 
 quently rebelled against its Turkish masters. The internal government is now wholly in the 
 i.amls of the Servians, who pay a small annual tribute to the sultan. Bosnia, now a jjachalic 
 of Turkey, comprising also under its government Tunkish Croatia and Hcrsegovina, and occu- 
 pying the north-western extremity of the empire, was anciently included in Lower Pannonia. 
 In the Middle Ages it first belonged to the Eastern empire, and afterwards became a separate 
 kingdom dependent upon Hungary. It was conquered by the Turks in 1480, after a war of 
 seventeen years : but it was not till 1522 that Solymun the Magnificent finally annexed it to 
 the Turkish dominions. Albania, a large province bordering on the Adriatic, is nearly the 
 same as the ancient Epirus, (p. 44.) Tliessaly and Macedonia preserve their ancient names 
 and limits. 
 
 CONSTANTINOPLE, the capital of the Turkish dominions, occupies a triangular promontory 
 near the eastern extremity of the province of Rumilia, at the junction of the Sea of Marmora 
 with the Thracian Bosporus. It is separated from its extensive suburbs Galata, Pera, &c., on 
 the north, by the noble harbor called the Golden Horn. Like Rome, Constantinople was 
 originally built on seven hills, The city.is about thirteen miles in circuit comprises an area 
 of about two thousand acres and has a population, exclusive of its suburbs, of about five 
 hundred thousand. The seraglio, containing the palace, mint, arsenal, public offices, &c^" 
 occupies the site of the ancient Byzanteum, (see p. 218,) at the apex of the triangle. It is aboul 
 three miles in circuit, and is entirely surrounded by walls. The Bosporus, or Channel of Con- 
 stantinople, is about seventeen miles in length, with a width varying from haJf a mile to two 
 miles. The channel is deep ; the banks abrupt, with stately cliffs; and the adjacent country ia 
 unrivalled for beauty.
 
 No. VIL 
 
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 '. '.X ' a^t^. ^~-S~\ c ' ' LS I /"-C> 
 
 
 
 SD*> 
 
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 V. 
 
 bm ~ Ul'l 
 
 IS 
 
 i / -fr --,.->- - T
 
 ANCIENT ITALY, Map xVo. VIII. 
 
 ANCIENT IT.ILY was called by the Greeks Hesperia, from its western (ituation in relation t* 
 Greece ; and from the Latin poets it received the names Ausonia, Satun ja, and (Knotria. (? 
 also p. 1J3.) About the time of Aristotle, (B. C. 380,) the Greeks divided Italy into six countries 
 or regions, Ausonia or Opica, Tyrrhenia, lapygia, Ombria, Liguria, and lleaelia ; but the di- 
 visions by which it is best known in Roman history art- those given on the accompanying 
 Map. Cisalpine Gaul, Etruria, Umbria, Picenum, the country of the Sabines, Latium, Cam- 
 pania, Samnium, Apulia, Calabria, Lucania, and Unilioruin Ager. 
 
 Cisalpine Oaul, or Oaul this side of the Jllps, embracing all northern Italy beyond the 
 Rubicon, wus inhabited by Gallic tribes, which, as early as six hundred years H. C., began to 
 pour over the Alps into this extensive and fertile territory. Ktruria, embracing the country 
 west and north of the Tiber, was inhabited by a nation which had attained to an advanced de- 
 gree of civilization before the founding of Rome. Umbna. embraced the country east of 
 Ktruria, from the Rubicon on the north to the river Nar, which separated it from the Sabine 
 territory on the south. Picenum, inhabited by the Picentes, was a country ou the Adriatic, 
 having the river ^Esis on the north, the Matrinus on the south, and on the west the Apennines, 
 which separated it from Umbria. The Country of the Sabines, at the period when it was 
 marked out with the greatest clearness and precision, was separated from Lalium by the river 
 Anio, from Elruria by the Tiber, from Umbria by the Nar, and from Picenum by the central 
 ridge of the Apennines. (See also Map No. X.) JMtium was south of Etruria and the 
 country of the Sabiues, from which it was separated by the Tiber and the Anio. Campania, 
 separated from Latium by the river Liris, was called the garden of Italy. The Campaniai: 
 nation conquered by the Romans was composed of Oscans, Tuscans. Samnites, and Greeks ; the 
 latter having formed numerous colonies in southern Italy. Samnium, the country of the Samnites, 
 bordered on the Adriatic, having Picenum on the north, Apulia on the south, and Latium and 
 Campania on the west. The ambitious and warlike Samnites not unfrequently brought into 
 the field a force of eighty thousand foot and eight thousand horse. JlpuLia, inhabited by th 
 early Daunii, Peucelii, and Messapii, bordered on the Adriatic on the east ; and, on the west, 
 on the territories of the Samnites, the Campanians, and Lucanians. Calabria, called also bj 
 the Greeks lapygia, embraced the south-eastern extremity of the Italian peninsula, answering 
 nearly to what is now called Terra di Otranto. JMCIIH-IU, inhabited by the warlike Lucuni, 
 who carried on a successful war with the Greek colonies of southern Italy, was separated 
 from Apulia and Calabria on the north-east by the Kradanus. liratiarum Jlgtr, the Country 
 of the Brutii, comprised the southern extremity of the peninsula, now called Calabria Ultra, 
 The Brutii, the most barbarous of the Italian tribes, were reduced by the Romans soon aftei 
 the withdrawal of Pyrrhus from Italy. 
 
 Since the downfall of the Roman empire Italy has never been united in one State. Aftei 
 having been successively possessed by the Heruli, Ostrogoths, Greeks, and Lombards, Charle- 
 magne annexed it to the empire of the Franks in 774 : from 888 till the establishment of thf 
 republic of Milan in 1150, it generally belonged, with the exception of the territory of the Ve- 
 netians, to the German emperors. In 1535, Milan, then a duchy, came into the possession of 
 the emperor Charles V. Since the war of the Spanish succession, the duchies of Milan and 
 Mantua have generally belonged to Austria, with the exception of the short time they formed 
 a part of the Cisalpine republic and the French empire. Venice was a republic from the 
 seventh century till 1797. It was confirmed to Austria by the treaty of 1815. The presenl 
 Italian States are the kingdom of Lombardy and Venice, forming a part of the Austrian etnpirt 
 kingdom of Sardinia kingdom of Naples and Sicily Grand-duchy of Tuscany States ol 
 the Church Duchies of Parma, Modena, and Lucca and the little republic of San-Marino. 
 
 The French rule in Italy was a great blessing to that unhappy country ; " but the coalition,' 
 says Sismondi, " destroyed all the good conferred by France." The state of the people con- 
 trasts very disadvantageously with the fertility of the soil and the beauty of the climate. 
 
 "How has kind llcav'n adorn'd the happy land, And Tyram y usurps her happy plains? 
 And scattered blessings with a wasteful hand ! The poor inhabitant beholds in vain 
 But what avail her unexhausted stores, The redd'ning orange and the swelling grain, 
 
 Her bloominf mountains and her sunny shores, Joyless he sees the growing oils and wines, 
 With all the gifts that Heav'n and earth imparl, And in the myrtle's fragrant shade repines : 
 The smiles of nature and the charms of art, Starves, in the midst of natnres's bounty cunt 
 \Vhileproud Oppression in her valleys reigns, And in the ladei' vineyt td dies for thirst."
 
 No. VIII. 
 
 HT 16! -lT~~ 20!
 
 THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Map No. IX. 
 
 RIEQAL ROME, or Rom.' under the Kings, occupying a period of about two hundred and forty 
 yours, from the founding of the city, 7. r >3 B. C., to the overthrow of royally, 510 B. C., ruled over 
 only a narrow strip of seacoast, from the Tiber southward to Terracina, an extent of about seventy 
 miles, (see .Map No. X :) but it already carried on an extensive commerce with Sardinia, Sicily, 
 and Carlliage. 
 
 KKITBLICAN ROME, occupying a period of about four hundred and eighty years, from the 
 overthrow of royalty 5 10 B. C. to the accession of Augustus, 23 B. C., extended the Roman do- 
 minion, not only over all Italy, but also over all the islands of the Mediterranean over Egypt, 
 nod all Northern Africa from Egypt westward lo the Atlantic Ocean over Syria and all Asia 
 Minor over Thrace, Achaia or Greece, Macedonia, and lllyricum and over all Gaul, and most 
 ol Spain. 
 
 IMPERIAL ROMK occupies a period of about five hundred years, extending from the accession 
 of Augustus, 28 B. C., to the overthrow of the Western empire of the Romans, A. D. 476. 
 Under Augustus, the Roman dominion was extended by the conquest of Masia, corresponding 
 to the present Turkish provinces of Bulgaria and Servia of Pannonia, corresponding to the 
 eastern part of southern Austria, and Hungary south of the Danube, Styria, Austrian Croatia, 
 and Slavonia, and the northern part of Bosnia of .Yuricum, corresponding to the Austrian 
 Sal/burg, western Styria, Carinthia, Austria north to the Danube, and a small part of south- 
 eastern Bavaria Rhcetin, extending over the country of the Tyrol and eastern Switzerland 
 mi'l Vindelicia, corresponding to southern Wirtemberg and Bavaria south of the Danube. 
 (-See also Maps Nos. VII. and XVII.) On the death of Augustus, therefore, the Roman empire 
 was bounded by the Rhine and the D.mube on the north ; by the Euphrates on the east ; by 
 the sandy deserts of Arabia and Africa on the south ; and by the Atlantic Ocean on the west. 
 
 The southern part of Britain, or liriltanin, was reduced by Ostorius, in the reign of Claudius; 
 and Agricola, in the reign of Domitian, extended the Roman dominion to the Frith of For'.li, 
 mud the Clyde. With this exception, the empire continued within the limits given it by 
 Augustus, until the accession of Tcujan, who, in the year 105, added to it Dacia, a region north 
 of the Danube, and corresponding to Wallwchia, Transylvania, Moldavia, and all Hungary east 
 of the Theiss and north of the Danube. Trajan also, in his eastern expedition, descended the 
 Tigris from the mountains of Armenia to the Persian Gulf, and for a brief period extended the 
 sway of Rome over Colchis, Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria; and even the Parthian 
 monarch accepted his crown from the hands of the emperor. In the time of Trajan, therefore, 
 who died A. D. 117, the Roman empire attained its greatest extent, being, at that period, 
 the greatest monarchy the world has ever known, extending in length more than three thou-- 
 sand miles, from the Western Ocean to the Euphrates, and more than two thousand in breadrh, 
 from the northern limits of Dacia to the deserts of Africa, and embracing an area of sixteen 
 hundred thousand square miles of the most fertile land on the face of the globe. Well might 
 it be called the Roman WORLD. 
 
 Adrian, or Hadrian, the successor of Trajan, voluntarily began the system of retrenchment 
 which was forced upon his successors. In order to preserve peace on the frontiers he aban- 
 doned all the conquests of his predecessor except Dacia, and bounded the eastern provinces by 
 the Euphrates. The unity of this mighty empire was first broken by the division into Eastern 
 and Western in the year 305. In the year 47fi the Western Empire fell under the repeated 
 attacks of the barbarians of Germany and Scythia, the rude ancestors of the most polished na- 
 tions of Europe. The Eastern Empire survived nearly a thousand years longer, but finally fell 
 under the power of the Turks, who took Constantinople, its capital, in the year 1453. and made 
 It the capital of the Ottoman empire.
 
 Nc. IX.
 
 AN( IENT ROME, Map No X. 
 
 In describing ANCIENT ROMK our ultention is first directed to the relative localities of tn* 
 Seven Hills ou which Rome was originally built the Aventine, Coelian, Palatine, Ksquiline, 
 Capitoline, Vin. lal, and Qnirinal all included within the walls of Servius Tuhius, built about 
 the year 550 13. C. About two hundred and eighty years later the emperor Aurelian commenced 
 the erection of a new wall, which was completed by Probus five years afler.vard. The cir- 
 cumference of the .Servian town was about six miles; that given it by the wall of Aurelian, 
 wbwb. extended to the right bank of thalTiber and inclosed a part of the Janiculan mount, 
 was about twelve ; although the city extended far beyond the limits of the latter. The modern 
 rampart surrounds, substantially, the same area as that of Aurelian. 
 
 The greater part of Modern Rome covers the flat surface of the Campus Martins, the C'api- 
 toline and Quirinal mounts, and the right bank of the Tiber from Hadrian's Mausoleum, (now 
 the Castle of St. Angelo,) south to and inc.luding the Jauiculan mount. The ancient city of the 
 Seven Hills is nearly all contained within the old walls of Servius. Almost the whole of this 
 area, with the exception of the Capitoline and Qnirinal hills, is now a wide waste of piles of 
 shattered architecture rising amid vineyards and rural lanes, exhibiting no tokens of habitation 
 except a few mouldering convents, villas, and collates. 
 
 Beginning our survey at the Capitoline hill, on which once stood the famous temple of Jupiter 
 Capitoliuus, we find there no vestiges of ancient grandeur, save about eighty feet of what are 
 believed to have been the foundations of the temple. At the northern extremity of the hill 
 we still discern the fatal Tarpcian Rock, surrounded by a cluster of old and wretched hovels, 
 while ruins enoumber its base to the depth of twenty feet. 
 
 The open space between the Capitoline, Esquiline, and Palatine hills, is covered by relics of 
 ancient buildings interspersed among modern churches and a few paltry streets. Here was 
 the Oreat Roman Forum a large space surrounded by and filled with public buildings, temples, 
 statues, arches, &.C., nearly all of which have disappeared ; and the surface pavement on which 
 they stood is now covered with their ruins to a depth of from fifteen to thirty feet. The space 
 which the Forum occupied has been called, until recently, Campo Vaccino, or the Field of 
 Cows ; and it is in reality a market place for sheep, pigs, and cattle. 
 
 In early times there was a little lake between the Capitoline and Palatine hills. In time this 
 was converted into a marsh ; and the most ancient ruin which remains to us, the Clnac.,1 
 Maxima, or great drain, built by the Tarquins, was designed for carrying off its waters. This 
 'irain, still performing its destined service, opens into the Tiber with a vault fourteen feet in 
 height and us many in width. The beautiful circle of nineteen Corinthian columns near the 
 Tiber, around the church of Santa Maria, lias been usually styled the Temple of Vesta sup- 
 posed to belong to the age of the Antonines. . 
 
 On the Palatine hill Augustus erected the earliest of the Palaces of the Ctesars ; Claudius ex- 
 tended them, and joined the Palatine to the Capitoline by a bridge ; and towards the northern 
 point of the Palatine,.Nero built his "Golden House," fronted by a vestibule in which stood 
 the emperor's colossal statue. The Aventine rises from the river steep and bare, surmounted 
 by a solitary convent. On the Ccelian are remains of the very curious circular Temple of 
 Faunus, built by Claudius. Southward are the ruins of the Haths of Caracalla, occupying a 
 surface equal to one-sixteenth of a square mile. The building, or range of buildings, was im- 
 mense, containing four magnificent temples dedicated to Apollo, /Esculapius, Hercules, and 
 Bacchus, a grand circular vestibule, with baths on each side for cold, tepid, warm, and sea- 
 bathing in the centre an immense square for exercise and beyond it a noble hall with sixteen 
 hundred marble seats fortlie bathers, and, at each end of the hall, libraries. On each side of the 
 building was a court surrounded by porticoes, with an odeum for music, and, in the middle, 
 a spacious basin for swjmming. There was also a gymnasium for running, wrestling, &c., and 
 around the whole a vast colonnade opening into spacious halls where the poets declaimed, and 
 philosophers gave lectures to their auditors. But the immense halls are now roofless, and the 
 wind sighs through the aged trees that have taken root in the pavements. 
 
 South of the Palatine was the Circus Maximus, which is said to have covered the spot 
 wheri the games were celebrated when the Romans seized the Sabine women. It was more 
 thi'.n ',w 'housane feet in length, and, in its greatest extent, contained seat? for two hundred
 
 No. X.
 
 584 
 
 and sixty thousand spectators. We can still trace its shape, but the s ructure has entirely dta- 
 appeared. 
 
 In the open space eastward of the Great Forum stands tho Coliseum or Flavian Amphi- 
 theatre, the boast of Rome and of the world. This gigantic edifice, which was begun by Ves- 
 pasian and completed by Titus, is in form an ellipse, and covers an area of about flve and 
 a-half acres. The external elevation consisted of four stories, each of the three lower stories 
 having eighty arches supported by half columns, Doric in the first range, Ionic in the second, 
 and Corinthian in the third. The wall of the fourth story was faced with Corinthian pilasters, 
 and lighted by forty rectangular windows. The space surrounding the central elliptical arena 
 was occupied with sloping galleries resting on a huge mass of arches, and ascending towards 
 the summit of the external wall. One hundred and sixty staircases led to the galleries. A 
 movable awning covered the whole, with the exception of the Podium, or covered gallery for 
 the emperor and persons of high rank. Within the area of the Coliseum, gladiators, martyrs, 
 slaves, and wild beasts, combated on the Roman festivals; and here the blood of both men 
 and animals flowed in torrents to furnish amusement to the degenerate Romans. The Coliseum 
 is now partially in ruins; scarcely a half presents its original height; the uppermost gallery 
 lias disappeared ; the second range is much broken ; the lowest is nearly perfect ; but the 
 Podium is in a very ruinous state. From its enormous mass " walls, palaces, half cities have 
 been reared ;" but Benedict XIV. put a stop to its destruction by consecrating the whole to the 
 martyrs whose blood had been spilled there. In the middle of the once bloody arena stands a 
 crucifix ; and around this, at equal distances, fourteen altars, consecrated to different saints, are 
 erected on the dens once occupied by wild beasts. 
 
 The principal ruins on the Esquiline, a part of them extending their intricate corridors on the 
 heights overlooking the Coliseum, have been called the Baths and the Palace of Titus ; but 
 although it is evident that baths constituted a part of their plan, the design of the whole is not 
 known. What is called the Temple of Minerva Medica, in a garden near the eastern walls, is a 
 decagonal ruin, supposed to belong to the age of the Antonines. The Baths of Diocletian, on 
 the Viminal mount, appear to have resembled, in their general arrangement, those of Caracalla. 
 Still farther to the north-east are the remains of the camp erected by Sejauus, the minister of 
 Tiberius, for the Praetorian guards. In the beautiful gardens of the historian Sallust, on the 
 eastern decliVity of the Pincian mount, are the remains of a temple and circus, supposed to 
 belong either to the Augustan age, or to the last days of the Republic. On the western ascent 
 of tlie thickly-peopled Qulruial, whose heights are crowned by the palace and gardens of the 
 pope, are extensive ruins of walls, vaults, and porticoes, belonging to the baths of Constantine, 
 They are now surrounded by the beautiful gardens of the Colonna palace. Farther south, be- 
 tween the Quirinal and Capitoline, some striking remains of the Forums of Nerva and Trajan 
 are still visible. 
 
 Of the numerous ruins in the Campus Martius, we have room for only a brief notice. Of the 
 Theatre of MarcMus, eleven arches of the exterior walls still remain. Of the Theatre of 
 Pompty, the foundation arches may be seen in the cellars and stables of the Palazzio Pio. The 
 Flaminian Circus and the Circus Jlgonalis are entirely in ruins. The Column of Jlntoninu* 
 and the Tomb of Augustus are still standing, with their summits much lowered. 
 
 The Pant/icon, the most perfect of all the remains of ancient Rome, is a temple of a circular 
 form, built by Agrippa. It was dedicated to Jupiter the Avenger, but besides the statue of 
 this god, it contained those of the other heathen deities, formed of various materials gold, 
 silver, bronze, and marble. The portico of this temple is one hundred and ten feet long by 
 forty-four in depth, and is supported by sixteen Corinthian columns, each of the shafts con- 
 sisting of a single piece of Oriental granite, forty-two feet in height. The bases and capital are 
 of white marble. Tho main building consists of a vast circular drum, with niches flanked by 
 columns, above which a beautiful and perfectly preserved cornice runs round the whole build- 
 ing. Over a second story, formed by an attic sustaining an upper cornice, rises, to the height 
 of one hundred and forty-three feet, the beautiful dome, which is divided internally into square 
 panels supposed to have been originally inlaid with bronze. A circular aperture in the dome 
 admits the only light which the place receives. The consecration of this temple (A. D. 818) as 
 a Christian church, has preserved, for the admiration of the moderns, this most beautiful of 
 heathen fanes. Christian altars now fill the recess where once stood the most famous statna* 
 of the gods of the heathen world.
 
 No. XI.
 
 CHART Ofl THE WORLD. Map No. XL 
 
 Map No. XI. is a CHART or THK WORLD on Mercator's projection a Chart of Ifittory, ex- 
 hibiting the world as known to Europeans at the period of the discovery of America and a 
 Chart of Isothermal linen, or lines of equal heat, showing the comparative mean annual tern 
 perature of different parts of the Earth's surface. 
 
 It will be observed that General History, previous to the discovery of America, is confined 
 to a small portion of the Earth's surface; as represented by the light portions of the Chart; 
 while the whole Western Continent and Greenland, most of Africa and Asia, and their islands, 
 and parts of Northern Europe and Iceland, were unknown to Europeans, and in the darkness 
 of barbarism. It would seem, therefore, that the history of THK WORLD has but just com- 
 menced. 
 
 The Isothermal lines show that the temperature of a place does not depend wholly upon its 
 latitude. Thus the southern limit of perpetually frozen ground in the northern hemisphere (at 
 a mean annual temperature of thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit) follows a line ranging from below 
 flfiy-five degrees of latitude to above seventy. The mean animal temperature of London, at 
 (illy-one and a-half degrees north latitude, is fifty degrees of Fahrenheit, the same as that of 
 Philadelphia, which is eleven and a-half degrees of latitude farther south. The line of greatest 
 heat, (at a mean annual temperature of eighty-two and four-tenths degrees of Fahrenheit,) is more 
 than ten degrees of latitude north of the Equator in South America, in Africa, and southern 
 Hindostan ; and about eight degrees south of the Equator in a part of the Indian Ocean be- 
 tween Borneo and Hew Holland. The sea is, generally, considerably warmer in winter than 
 the land, and cooler in summer. Continents and large islands are found to be warmer on their 
 western sides than on the eastern. The extremes of temperature are experienced chiefly in 
 large inland tracts, and little felt in small islands remote from continents. Had the Arctic 
 regions been entirely of land, the intense heat of summer and the cold of winter would have 
 been equally fatal to animal life. 
 
 BATTLE GROUNDS OP THE AVARS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 AND THE WARS OF NAPOLEON. Map No. XII. 
 
 The wars growing out of the French Revolution, of which those of Napoleon were a con- 
 tinuation, embrace a period of nearly twenty-three years, from the defeat of the Austrians at 
 Jemappes on the 17th of November, 1792, to the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo on the 18th 
 of June, 1815. 
 
 The accompanying Map presents at a glance the vast theatre on which were exhibited the 
 thousand Scenes in this mighty Drama of human suffering. The thickly-dotted Spanish penin- 
 sula may be regarded as one great battle-field, where Frenchman, Spaniard, Portuguese, and 
 Briton, sank in the death struggle together. Those dark spots where the "pealing drum," the 
 u waving standards," and the " trumpets clangor," invited to slaughter, cluster thickly around 
 the eastern boundaries of France, including Belgium and northern Italy ;- they are seen in 
 far-off Egypt and Palestine, recalling Napoleon's dreams of Eastern conquest ; and they strew 
 the route to Moscow, where, from the fires of the Kremlin, and amid the snows of a Russian 
 winter, the French eagles commenced a lasting retreat. 
 
 As we look over this vast gladiatorial arena of frantic, struggling Life, and agonizing Death, 
 our thoughts naturally turn from its mingled horrors and glories to rest upon '.he commanding 
 genius, the wizard spirit, of him "who rode upon the whirlwind and dire ted the storm" 
 of him whom Byron well describes as a mighty Gambler, 
 
 "Whose game was empires, and whose stakes were throjes, 
 Whose table earth, whose dice were human bones." 
 
 But the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon, with all the suffering which they oc- 
 casioned, have not been unattended with useful results in urging forward the march of European 
 civilization. The moral character of Napoieon, the most prominent actor in the drama, has 
 been variously drawn by friends and foes; but the towering height, the lightning-like rapidity 
 and the brilliancj, of his genius, have never been questioned >y his most bitter revilers.
 
 NO. xn.
 
 FRANCE, SPAIN, AXD PORTUGAL. Map No. XIII. 
 
 FRANCE, (ancient Oauf,) bordering on three seas, and being enclosed by natural boundariet 
 in all sides except the north-east, where her natural limits are the Rhine, is admirably situated 
 for a commanding influence in European affairs ; and, besides, her large population, the active 
 spirit of her people, the fertility of her soil, and the amenity of her climate, place her among 
 the foremost of the great nations of the earth in power and resources. 
 
 \Vhen first known to the Romans, Gaul was divided between the Belgae, the Celtae, and tho 
 Aquitani ; the Belgae or Belgians between the Seine and Lower Rhine ; the Celts between the 
 Seine and Garonne ; and the Aquitani between the Garonne and Pyrenees ; but the Romans, 
 under Augustus, made four divisions of Gaul ; Belgica, in the north-east ; Lugdunensis, be- 
 tween the Seine and Loire ; Aquitania, between the Loire and Pyrent-es ; and Narbonensis, in 
 the south-east. 
 
 None of the barbarian tribes of Europe passed through a more agitated or brilliant career 
 than the ancient Gauls, the ancestors of the French people. They burned Rome, conquered 
 Macedonia, forced Therinopyhe, pillaged Delphi, besieged Cartilage, and established the empire 
 ot Galatia in Asia Minor; but, after a century of partial conflicts, and nine years of general 
 war with Csesar, they yielded to the overshadowing power of Rome. When Rome fell, Gaul 
 was overrun by the Germanic nations : then came the beginning of the empire of the Franks 
 the encroachments and defeat of the Saracens the vast empire of Charlemagne and then the 
 increasing power of the feudal nobility, until, in the year 937, the last of the Carlovingian 
 princes possessed only the town of Laon ! Under Hugh Capet even, dukes, counts, and minor 
 seigneurs, shared among themselves nearly all of the modern kingdom. But by degrees the 
 great fiefs, one after another, fell to the crown ; and before the close of the seventeenth century 
 all France was united under one monarchy in the person of Louis XIV. 
 
 Thus, with her history, the geography of France has been continually changing ; but those 
 divisions of her territory best known in general history are the old Provinces, as given on the 
 accompanying Map. These provinces, during the Middle Ages, were all either duchies or 
 minor seignories ruled by the feudal nobility ; and their history is, therefore, virtually, for a 
 .ong period, that of separate kingdoms. (See description of Provence, Brittany, Normandy, 
 Aquitaine, Burgundy, Roussillon, &c., pp. 300, 371-2, 379.) 
 
 At the period of the French Revolution the thirty-three provincial divisions were abolished, 
 and France was then divided into eighty-six Departments or Prefectures ; these into three 
 hundred and sixty-three Arrondissements ; these into two thousand eight hundred and forty-five 
 Cantons ; and these latter into thirty-eight thousand six hundred and twenty-three Communes. 
 
 SPAIN, anciently Hispania, a name given to the entire peninsufti beyond the Pyrenees, was 
 not fully conquered by the Romans till the time of Augustus, who made three divisions of the 
 country ; Jst, Ba,tica, in the south of Spain, embracing the more modern province of Anda- 
 lusia ; 2d, Lusitania, embracing all Portugal south of the Douro, and, in addition, most of 
 Ebtremadura and Salamanca ; and, 3d, Tarraconcnsis, embracing the remainder, and greater 
 portion, of the peninsula. 
 
 About the time of the subversion of the Western empire of the Romans, Spain was overrun 
 by the Vandals, and other Gothic tribes ; and, a century later, the Christianized Visigoth* estab- 
 lished their supremacy in every part of the peninsula. At the beginning of the eighth century 
 the Moors from Africa overran the whole country, but after their defeat by Charles Martel in 
 France, (see p. 253,) the Christians began to make head against them, founded the kingdom 
 of Leon about the middle of the eighth century, and, from that period, gradually extended 
 their power until, in 1492, Granada, the last Moorish kingdom, yielded to the arms of Ferdinand 
 o! Aragon, and, soon after, the whole Spanish peninsula was united under one government. 
 In 1139 PORTUGAL became an independent kingdom: from 1580 to 1640 r, was a Spanish 
 province; but at the latter period it regained its independence. For historical accounts of 
 Navarre, Aragon, Cj stile, Leon, and Granada, see p. 317 V Portugal, 318.
 
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 lordo^--^..^ 
 
 N N ,,^J^, 
 
 f^ftfinr.t-- s--^ -'*' *.*** o A.
 
 SWITZERLAND, DENMARK, AND PARTS OF NORWAY AND 
 SWEDEN, Map No. XIV. 
 
 i\t & brief outline of the history of SWITZERLAND has already been given on page -69. and 
 y( DKNMAKK, SWKDKN, and NORWAY, on page 3H8, we shall here confine our attention princi- 
 pally to the physical geography, government, population, &.C., of those countries. 
 
 SWITZERLAND is a republic formed by the union of twenty-two confederated States or 
 Clintons, whose total area is about fifteen thousand square miles, or about one-third of that ol 
 Hie State of New York. Population, about two millions two hundred thousand, of whom 
 nearly two-thirds are I'rotesiauts. More than half of the Swiss people speak a German dialect 
 about lour hundred and filly thousand speak French ; and about one hundred and twenty-five 
 thousand a corrupt Italian. 
 
 The greater portion of Switzerland consists of mountains ; and the geographical appearance 
 of the country has, not improperly, been compared to a large town, of which the valleys are 
 the streets, and the mountains groups of contiguous houses. Both the Rhine and the Rhone, 
 and several other important rivers, have their sources in Switzerland; but the Aar drains the 
 greater part of the country, passes through the lakes of lirienz and Thun, and, after a course 
 of about one hundred and seventy miles, unites with the Rhine. The lakes of Switzerland are 
 numerous all navigable and remarkable for the depth and purity of their waters, and their 
 great variety of fish. Lakes Thun and lirienz are nineteen hundred feet above the level of the 
 sea the lakes of Geneva and Constance about twelve hundred. Not only is Switzerland much 
 colder than the adjacent countries, owing to its elevation, and the influence of its glaciers in 
 cooling the atmosphere, but the cold has increased in modern times, and many tracts are now 
 bare that were formerly covered with forests and pasture grounds. 
 
 The kingdom of DKNMARK, properly so called, comprises only Jutland, or the northern tilf 
 of the ancient L'tmbric Chersonese, together with the islands between Jutland and Sweden, and 
 the island of Bornholm in the Baltic. To these possessions have been added the duchies of 
 Sleewick and Ilolstein, which originally formed part of the German empire; and as sovereign 
 of which the Danish king now ranks as a member of the Germanic confederation. Iceland, 
 part of Greenland, the Faroe isles, and some possessions in the East and West Indies, also be- 
 long to Denmark. 
 
 The surface of the Danish peniniula is remarkably low and level; and along the whole 
 western coast of Sleswick and HoUtein the country is defended, as in Holland, against irruptions 
 from the sea, by immense mounds or dikes. The soil is various, but. generally, very fertile. 
 There are no mountains, and no rivers of any magnitude ; but the inlets of the sea are nume 
 ous, and penetrate far inland. Since the year lliiii) the government has been perhaps as also- 
 lut: a monarchy as any other in the world; but, the sovereigns have generally exercised their 
 extensive powers with great moderation. The Lutheran is the established religion. Population 
 b U little more than two millions. 
 
 The kingdom of SWEDEN comprises, with Norway and Lapland, the whole of the Scandi- 
 lavian peninsula, west of the Baltic. Sweden is, in general, a level, well-watered country, but 
 the soil is poor. Sweden extends so far north that, near Tornea, the sun is visible, at mid- 
 summer, during the whole night. The government of Sweden is a hereditary monarchy, with 
 a representative diet consisting of four chambers, formed, respectively, of deputies from the 
 nobility, clergy, burghers, and peasants, or cultivators. 
 
 NORWAY, forming the western part of the great Scandinavian peninsula, is a mountainous 
 country, and is characterized by its lofty mountain plateau in the interior, and the deep in- 
 dentations or arms of the sea all round the coast. Although Norway is under the same crown 
 with Sweden, it is, in reality, little connected with the latter country. Its democratic assembly, 
 called the Storthing, meets for three months once in three years, by its own right, and not by 
 any writ from the king. If a bill pass both divisions of this assembly in three successive 
 itorthings, it becomes a law of the land without the royal assent a right which no other 
 Bonarchico-legislative assembly in Europe possesses.
 
 'No XIV. 
 
 COUNTRIES 
 around the. 
 
 BALTIC SE^
 
 THE NETHERLANDS, NOW EMBRACED IN THE KINGDOMS OP 
 HOLLAND AND BELGIUM. Map No. XV. 
 
 Nearly the whole kingdom of HOLLAND, (often mentioned in history as the "Low Countries,") 
 with the exception of u lew insignificant hill ranges, is a continuous flat a highly fertile 
 country in great part conquered by human labor from the sea, which, at high tide, is above 
 the level of a considerable portion of the surrounding country. The latter is at all time? 
 liable to dangerous inundations. Where there are no natural ramparts against the sea, enormous 
 artificial mounds or dikes have been constructed ; but those are sometimes broken down by 
 the force of Hie waves. That extensive arm of the sou called Ihe Zuyder Zee, occup\i' g MI 
 area of about twelve hundred square miles, was formed by successive inundations in the 
 course of the thirteenth century. The surface of the country presents an immense network 
 of canals, the greater number being appropriated to the purposes of drainatre. When Ihe sea 
 is once shut out by the dikes the marsh is intersected by water courses ; and wind-mills, erect- 
 ed on the ramparts, are employed to force up the water. Sometimes the marsh is so far below 
 the level of the sea -even twenty-five or thirty feet below the highest tides that two or more 
 ramparts and mills, at different elevations, are requisite. There is no other country where 
 nature lias done so little, and man so much, as this. The north and west provinces of UKI.QIUM 
 are very similar in their flatness, fertility, dikes, and canals, to Holland. 
 
 Goldsmith's description of Holland is peculiarly appropriate. 
 
 "To men of other minds my fancy flies, Spreads its long arms around the watery roar, 
 
 KinbosomM in Ihe deep where Holland lies: Scoops out an empire and usurps the shore: 
 
 Methinks her patient sons before me stand, While the pent ocean, rising o'er the pile, 
 
 Where the broad ocean leans against the land ; Sees an amphibious world beneath him smile, 
 
 And, sedulous m stop the coming tide, The slow canal, the yeliow-blossom'il vale, 
 
 Lift the tall ramparts artificial pride. The willow-tufled bank, the gliding sail, 
 
 Onward, methinks, and diligently slow, The crowded mart, the cultivated plain, 
 
 The firm compacted bulwark seems to grow; A new creation rescued from his reign." 
 
 Holland and Belgium were partially subjected by the Romans: in (lie second century Hol- 
 land was overrun by the Saxons : in the eighth both were conquered by Charles Marlel ; and lliey 
 subsequently formed a part of the dominions of Charlemagne. From the tenth (o the fifteenth 
 century they were divided into many petty sovereignties, most of which successively p-i-scd 
 into the possession of the house of Burgundy, ihence to that of Austria, and, about the middle 
 of the sixteenth century, the whole fell under the rule of Charles V., king of Spain and em- 
 peror of Germany. The arbitrary measures of Philip II. of Spain, the son and successor of 
 Charles V., led to a general rebellion in the Netherlands: the impendence of the " Republic 
 of the United Provinces," embracing the States of Holland, was acknowledged by Sp;iin in 
 1609, while the ten southern provinces, which had either remained loyal to Spain or been kept 
 in subjection, had in the meantime passed under the sovereignty of the house of Austria. 
 From this period the southern provinces have been generally distinguished by the name of 
 Belgium. After having been several times conquered by the French, and recovered from them, 
 they were incorporated, in 1795, with the French republic, and divided into departments. In 
 1800 the republic of Holland was erected into a kingdom for Louis, a brother of Napoleon; 
 and on the downfall of the latter, the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, united Holland and Belgium 
 to form the kingdom of the Netherlands, which latter, by the Revolution of IH:>(), was dissolved 
 into the present kingdoms of Holland and Belgium. A portion of Luxembourg, entirely de- 
 tached from the rest of the Dutch dominions, belongs to Holland. 
 
 Of the inhabitants of Holland, numbering about two millions six hundred thousnnd, about 
 two millions are Dutch, who speak what is called the Low Dutch, as distinguished from the 
 High Dutch or German the two great divisions of the Dutch or Teutonic language. The popu- 
 lation of Belgium numbers about four millions three hundred thousand, divided among three 
 principal races, the Germanic, which comprehends the Flemings and Germans; the Gallic, 
 to which belong the Walloons, who spf;:i>: a dialect of the ancient French; and the Semitic, 
 which comprehends only the Jews. The French language is used in public affairs, and by all 
 Ihe educated and wealthy classes.
 
 No. XV. 
 
 1 West Flanders 
 SEastManders 
 
 SLiege 
 9Luxenibourff 
 
 r-Siv 1 !^ * QUiinffltlC /ivTavrTip "> 
 
 i^jCharlemon^t ( &*%
 
 CENTRAL EUROPE, TOGETHER WITH POLAND, HUNGARY, 
 Ai\D WESTERN RUSSIA. Map No. XVII. 
 
 CBNTRAL EUROPE may be considered as embracing; the present numerous fierman States, 
 and Switzerland ; including in the former tliose portions of the Austrian and Prussian empires 
 which, previous to the French Revolution, belonged to the German empire. 
 
 The " German Kmpire" occupies a prominent position in the history of Continental Europe ; 
 Imt it lias passed llirouu'h so many changes in limits, divisions, and government, that the reader 
 of history, unless lie is familiar with them, will often be perplexed by apparent contradictions. 
 Thus the emperor of Austria is ofien mentioned as the emperor of Germany ; and portions of 
 Germany are spoken of as belonging to Austria. The following sketch of the German Empire, 
 and the Germanic Confederation, it is believed will explain these seeming inconsistencies, and 
 rentier German history more intelligible to the general reader. 
 
 The first Carlovingian sovereigns of Germany were hereditary monarchs ; but as early as 887 
 the great vassals of the crown deposed their emperor, and elected another sovereign in his 
 stead ; and from that period down to the dissolution of the German empire in 1806, the em- 
 perors of Germany were elected by the most powerful vassals of the empire, some of whom 
 were monarchs within their own domains. From 1745 to 1800 the Austrian emperors exercised 
 a double sovereignty, as emperors of Austria, and emperors of Germany also ; but a portion 
 of the Austrian dominions were not included in the German empire. 
 
 At the period of the outbreak of the French Revolution, the German empire was divided 
 into what were termed Ten Great Circles, each of which had its diet for the transaction of 
 local business; but atfairsofgener.il importance to the empire at large were treated by the 
 imperial diet summoned by the emperor. The Ten Great Circles were, 1st, the Circle of 
 .Austria; 2d, The Circle of Burgundy, (including most of the present Belgium, and belong- 
 ing to Austria;) 3d, the Circle of Westphalia; 4th, the Circle of the Palatinate; 5th, the 
 Circle of the Upper Rhine; Oth, the Suabian Circle, (including Wirtemberg and Baden; see 
 Suabia, p. 270;) 7th, the Circle of Bavaria ; 8th, the Circle of Franco nia, (see Frjucoiiia, p. 271);) 
 9th, the Circle of Lower Saxony, (including the duchies of Magdeburg, Hoist ein, &c. : the latter 
 a part of Denmark ;> 10th, the Circle of Upper Hamny, (including Pomerania, Hramlenbiirg, the 
 electorate of Saxony, &.c.) In addition to these Circles the empire embraced the kingdom of 
 Bohemia; the margraviate of Moravia; the duchy of Silesia, (Austrian and Prussian;) and 
 various small territories held directly of the emperor. The Swiss cantons had revolted from the 
 empire, and maintained their independence. Thus the German empire, consisting of a vast 
 aggregation of Slates, from large principalities or kingdoms down to free cities and the 
 estates of earls or counts, comprised all the countries of Central Europe, and was bounded 
 worth by northern Denmark and the Baltic; east by Prussian Poland, Galicia, and Hungary; 
 south by the Italian Tyrol and Switzerland; and west by France and Holland. The Austrian 
 monarch was at the head of this vast empire; but he had also other States, such as Hungary, 
 Galicia, Slavonia, &c., which had no connection with the German empire. Most of Prussia, 
 and the southern 'null' of Denmark, were also included in the German dominions. 
 
 Napoleon made important changes in the political geography of the German empire. By the 
 treaty of Campo Fonr.io in 1797, (see p. 407,) the frontiers of France were for the first time ex- 
 tended to the Rhine ; and the Circle of Burgundy was thus cut off from the German dominions. 
 The treaty of Presburg in 1805 was followed by other changes, Austrian Tyrol being given to 
 Bavaria, and Hanover to Prussia ; and, in lh'00, by the Confederation of the Rhine, (see p. 485,) 
 a population of sixteen millions was taken from the Germanic dominion of Aus'ria. Under 
 these circumstances, on the (ith of Aug. l&'Ofi, the Austrian emperor solemnly renounced the 
 ntyle and title of emperor of Germany. The war with Prussia in 1807 deprived the Prussian 
 monarch of nearly one half of his dominions ; and Westphalia was soon after erected into n 
 kingdom for Napoleon's brother Jerome. 
 
 The downfall of Napoleon restored Germany to its geographical and political position in 
 Europe, but not as an empire acknowledging one supreme head. A confederation of thirty- 
 five (afterwards changed to thirty-four) Independent sovereignties.* anil four free cities, replaced 
 the old elective German monarchy. In this Confederation are embraced all the Austrian and 
 Prussian territories formerly belonging to the German empire ; also Holstein, (a part of Dec- 
 mark,) and Luxembourg, (a part of Holland ;) the emperor of Austria, and the kings of 
 Prussia, Denmark, and Holland, becoming, for their respective German territories, parties to
 
 NO. xvn. 

 
 GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND, Map No. XVI. 
 
 The UNITED KINODUM or GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND consists of the islands Great Britain 
 and Ireland, the former including the once independent kingdoms of England and Scotland, 
 and the whole constituting not only the nucleus anil the centre, but also the main body and 
 seat, of the wealth and power of the BRITISH EMI-IRK. The colonies and foreign dependencies 
 belonging to the United Kingdom are of great extent and importance, consisting principally of the 
 liritish possessions in North America, the West Indies, the Cape of Good Hope, Australia, and 
 '.he East Indies. The British East India possessions alone embrace an area of one million two 
 hundred thousand square miles. It is doubtless the common opinion that the United Kingdom 
 is indebted to its territorial possessions for a large portion of its wealth and power ; but many 
 able writers have come to the conclusion that these colonies and dependencies occasion an 
 enormous outlay of expense without any equivalent advantage, and that they are a source of 
 weakness rather than of strength. 
 
 No country ever existed more favorably situated for the centre of a mighty empire than the 
 United Kingdom. Its insular situation gives it a well defended frontier, rendering the country 
 comparatively secure from hostile attacks, and affording unequalled facilities for commerce; 
 while its soil enjoys the fortunate medium between fertility and barrenness that excludes in- 
 dolence on the one hand, and poverty on the other. Its harbors are numerous and excellent: 
 its principal rivers, the Thames, Trent, and Severn in England, and the Shannon in Ireland, 
 are all navigable to a very great distance : iron is found in the greatest abundance : its tin 
 mines of Devon and Cornwall are the most productive of any in Europe : its salt springs and sail 
 beds are alone sufficient for the supply of the whole world ; and its inexhaustible coal mines, 
 the principal source and foundation of its manufacturing and commercial prosperity, are more 
 valuable than would have been the possession of all the gold and silver mines in the world. 
 But England has an enormous public debt : her government is very expensive ; and con- 
 sequently, with all her wealth and prosperity, the burdens of taxation are unusually heavy. 
 In 1838 her public debt, contracted in great part during the American Revolution, and the 
 French revolutionary war*, amounted to nearly eight hundred million pounds sterling. Her 
 expenditures during the same year were upwards of fifty millions, of which more than 
 twenty-nine millions were appropriated to defray the interest and expense of managing the 
 public debt! 
 
 The inhabitants who occupied the British isles at the period when the Romans first landed 
 in England, fifty-five years before Christ, belonged partly to the Celtic, and partly to the Gothic 
 family the Celts having very early passed over into England from the contiguous coasts of 
 France; and the Relgic Goths having at a later period driven the Celts northward and west- 
 ward into Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and occupied the eastern, lower, and more fertile portions 
 of England. The Rowans conquered England and the more (Southern portions of Scotland, 
 but appear not to have visited Ireland. After the departure of the Romans, about A. D. 4ni), 
 the Caledonian Celts overran the country, when the Saxon chiefs, tlengist and Horsa, were in- 
 vitedover to aid their English brethren. The conquest of England by the united Saxons, Jutes, and 
 Angles, occupied a period of about one hundred and thirty years, from the landing of Hengist. 
 In the ninth and tenth centuries occurred the repeated inroads of the Danes, who, at length, 
 in 1017, under their leaders Sweyn and Canute, became masters of the kingdom, which, how- 
 ever, they only held till 1041. In the year 1066 occurred the conquest of England by William 
 of Normandy. Through William and the princes of the house of Plantagenet, more than a 
 third part of France was placed, by inheritance, marriage, conquest, &c., under the immediate 
 jurisdiction and sovereignty of the kings of England ; but during the reign of John, surnamed 
 Lackland, the French recovered most of their provinces. In 1 169 Henry II. began the conquest 
 of Ireland. 
 
 The leading epochs in later English history are, the Civil Wars of the Two Roses, terminated 
 Oy the battla of Bosworth Field in 1484: the union of the crowns of England and Scotland in 
 Ki04 : the great Civil War in the reign of Charles I., followed by the execution of that monarch 
 in 1649: the Restoration in 166U: the Revolution of 1688: the legislative union of England 
 and Scotland in 1707 : the accession of the House of Hanover in 1714, (see Hanover p. 482 :) the 
 American War, 1776-1784: the war with revolutionary France, 1793-1815: the legislative 
 union of Ireland with England and Scotland, 1799 : the repeal of the Test Act, 1828 : Catholic 
 Ema:>cipat -m, 182 1 ; and passage of the Reform Act, 183U.
 
 No. XVI.
 
 598 
 
 the league. The affairs of the Confederation are managed by h diet, in which the representa- 
 tive of Austria presides. Until a very recent period each of the German States had its own 
 custom houses, tariff, and revenue laws, by which the internal trade of the country was sub> 
 jected to many vexations and ruinous restrictions ; but chiefly through the influence of Prussia 
 this selfish system has been abandoned ; free trade exists between the States ; and a commodity 
 that has once passed the frontier of the league may now be conveyed without hinderauc 
 throughout its whole extent. 
 For notices of Russia, Poland, and Hungary, see pp. 287, 311, and 542. 
 
 THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. Map No. XVIII. 
 
 The UNITED STATES occupy the middle division of North America, extending from the At- 
 lantic to the Pacific Ocean, and embracing an area of about three millions two hundred thou- 
 sand square miles. Physical geography would divide this broad belt into three great sections ; 
 1st, the Atlantic coast, whose rivers flow into the Atlantic ; 2d, the Valley of the Mississippi, 
 whose waters find an outlet in the Gulf of Mexico ; and 3d, the Pacific coast, embracing an 
 extensive territory west of the Rocky Mountains. The section between the Alleghanies and 
 the Atlantic, embracing the thirteen original States, has a soil generally rocky and rough in the 
 north-eastern or New England States ; of moderate fertility in the Middle States ; and generally 
 light and sandy in the Southern Atlantic States. The immense Valley of the Mississippi, in- 
 cluded between the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains, and drained by the Mississippi, 
 Missouri, Ohio, Arkansas, and Red rivers, is one of the largest and finest basins in the world, 
 embracing an area of more than one million square miles nearly equal to all Europe, with 
 the exception of the Russian empire. In the eastern and middle sections of this valley the 
 soil is generally of very superior quality; but extensive sandy wastes skirt the eastern base of 
 the Rocky Mountains. The country west of the Rocky Mountains exhibits a great variety of 
 soil. Washington and Oregon territories are divided into three belts or sections, by mountain 
 ranges running nearly parallel with the coast. The eastern section is rocky, broken, and 
 barren ; the western fertile. Most parts of Utah and western New Mexico are an extensive 
 elevated region of sandy barrens and prairie lands : the northern and eastern sections of Cali- 
 fornia are hilly and mountainous : the only portion adapted to agriculture being the southern 
 section, and a narrow strip along the coast, forty or fifty miles in width. The vast mineral 
 wealth of California gives that country its chief importance. 
 
 The United States seem destined to become, at no distant day, in population, wealth, and 
 power, the greatest nation of the earth. In the year 1850 their population numbered more 
 than twenty-three millions; and if it should continue to increase, for a century to come, as it 
 ha-s during the past twenty years, at the end of the century it will number one hundred and 
 sixty millions, and then be only half as populous &s Britain or France. Hardly any limits can 
 be assigned to the probable wealth of so extensive and fertile a country, intersected by numer- 
 ous canals and navigable lakes and rivers, bound together by its roads of iron, bordering on 
 two oceans, and commanding the trade of the world. In commerce it is even now the second 
 country on the globe, being inferior only to Great Britain: in its agricultural products it has no 
 equal ; and in manufactures it has already risen to great respectability. Its revenue, which has 
 arisen chiefly from customs on imports, and the sale of public lands, was sufficient in January 
 1337, not only to complete the payment of the public debt contracted during the t-vo wars with 
 Great Britain, but also, after retaining five million dollars in the treasury, to distribute more 
 than thirty-seven millions among the States. In 1838 the United States was entirely free from 
 debt, while at the same time Great Britain owed a debt of nearly eight hundred million 
 pounds sterling, equal to more than thirty-jive hundred millions uf dollars ! the annual interest 
 on which, at the low English rates, was more than three times the amount of the total annual 
 expenditure of the American government. 
 
 Thi national existence of the United States commenced on the 4th of July, 1776^ when they
 
 No. X7in.
 
 600 
 
 declared their independence of Great Britain. The seven years' war of the Revolution fol- 
 lowed: the definitive treaty of peace was signed September 30th, 1783: the present Constitu- 
 tion was ratified by Congress July 14th, 1788 ; and on the 30th of April, 1789, Washington was 
 inaugurated first President of the United States. In 1803, Louisiana, embracing a vast and un- 
 defined territory west of the Mississippi, was purchased from France for fifteen millions of dol- 
 lars ; and iu 1821 Florida was ceded to the United States by Spain. On the 4th of June, 1812, 
 the American Congress declared war against Great Britain: peace was concluded at Ghent, 
 Dec. 14th, 1814. In the year 1845 the Republic of Texas was annexed to the United States. 
 In April 184(i a war with Mexico began: California was conquered by the Americans during 
 the summer of the same year ; on the '27th of March, 1847, Vera Cruz capitulated ; and on 
 the 14th of September the American army entered the city of Mexico. In February, 1848, a 
 treaty was concluded with Mexico, by which the United States obtained a huge Increase of ter- 
 ri.orj) embracing the present New Mexico, Ut*h, ami California.
 
 PART III. 
 OUTLINES OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. The earliest historical statement that we possess carries us back to the 
 ante'liluvian period of our world's history. Seeming barrenness of the field thus opened to us. 
 What assurances are given the student. 2. Subject presented, and questions suggested by the 
 SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT OF THE CREATION. What is purposed in relation thereto. 3. Popular 
 belief relative to the work of creation. The belief opposed to this. 
 
 4. GEOLOGICAL HISTORY OP THK EARTH. 5. The facts on which the geological argument is 
 based. Character of the earth's surface. 0. Formation of the stratified rocks. Fossil remains 
 in the uppermost strata. 7. Evidences of great convulsions of the globe. What geology has 
 not the rashness to conjecture, on the one hand, and what it has proved, on the other. 8. How 
 the geological theory is now generally regarded. The opposition to it. The suggestion of va- 
 rious possibilities miraculous interpositions, &c., how regarded. The supposition that the 
 fossil remains were deposited at an epoch so recent as the deluge. 9. The assertion that the 
 geological theory is derogatory to the Deity. 10. Various opinions whether the whole or a part ot 
 the globe was embraced in the "six days" work of creation. II. Of the period of time em- 
 braced in them. 12. Concluding remarks on the geological portion of our world's history. 
 
 13. The sceptical argument against Bible history. Collateral testimony of what use to the 
 student. 14. The four leading historical facts in the history of the antediluvian world. 
 
 15. UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACE, the doctrine of the Bible. Varieties of the human family. 
 Science not opposed to scripture testimony. 16. Peculiarities of form and color not permanent 
 characteristics of races. Examples. The proof furnished by them. 17. The comparative 
 study of languages tends to the same result. Languages of the earth, how grouped. The af- 
 finities between them show a common origin. 18. The same result shown by the course of 
 ancient migrations. 
 
 19. INSTITUTION or A SABBATH. The sabbath probably known to the antediluvians. Evi- 
 dences of the Sabbath among heathen nations. 20. Division of time by our Saxon ancestors. 
 Origin of our names of the days of the week. 21. The result showing a common origin of the 
 prevalent custom of dividing time. 22. Jewish festivals, and heathen sacrifices. 
 
 2X THE ORIGIN OF DISCORD. Brief scriptural account of it in the history of Cain. Astatic 
 traditions on this subject more minute. Account which the Asiatics give of their own origin. 
 Supposed original source of these traditions. Grecian and Roman account of the origin of 
 discord. 24. The struggle of opposing races forms the main subject of primitive history. How 
 described in the poems of Hindoo mythology. The same legend enlarged and beautified by 
 tho Greeks. 2j. Sources of early profane history. Moses probably not the first historian. 
 Job. 
 
 26. COINCIDENCES BETWEEN SACRED AND PROFANE HISTORY. 27. Sanchoniatho and hia 
 writings. Coincidenceswith scripture history. 28. Phoenician system of idolatry. 29. General
 
 602 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 analogy between Sanchoniatho's account and the Bible record. 30. The writings of Berosus. 31. 
 His account of the creation. His list of kings before and after the deluge. The first king on the 
 list. 32. The most wicient god of the Chaldeans, the same as that of the Romans and Greeks 
 Confounded by the Greeks with the Noah of scripture. 33. Farther illustrations of the inter 
 weaving of scripture history with heathen mythology, in the history of Nimrod. 
 
 34. TRADITIONS OF THE DELUGE. Their universality. 35. r.nd 36. The Chaldean account 
 of the deluge, as given by Berosus. 37. Grecian traditions of the deluge. How viewed by 
 Plutarch, and the Latin writers. 38. American traditions. Mexican tradition of the deluge. 
 Of the building of the pyramid at Cholula. The Mexican Noah. Tradition of the Algonquir 
 tribes. Of the Iroquois tribes. The age of fire. 39. Tradition of the Taraenacs of South 
 America. Of the Chilians. Of the natives of New Granada. 40. Remarks on these traditions 
 Their probable origin. Causes of the variety of character which they present. 41. The asse? 
 tions of the sceptic disproved. 
 
 42. Summary of the topics examined. ANCIBNT CHRONOLOGY. 43. Difficulties in the way 
 of the historian. What is required of him on the subject of ancient chronology. The old sys- 
 tems still generally adhered to. Examples. Bible Chronology. Danger to be apprehended. - 
 44. Diversity of dates assigned to the creation. To the deluge. The ten most important dates 
 of the deluge. 45. Result of the comparison. Dates assigned to the Exodus of the Israelites 
 the destruction of Troy the overthrow of Nineveh the founding of Rome the nativity of the 
 Saviour. 46. Doubts suggested. Erroneousness of the common era of the deluge 47. Tiie 
 epoch of the deluge, and of the creation how calculated. Sources of uncertainty and error 
 in the calculations. 48. The scriptures "n the time of Josephus. Subsequent changes made in 
 their chronology. 49. Probable origin of the errors. The Chronology of Usher erroneous. 
 
 50. Hieroglyphical evidence. Dates assigned by Dr. Hales for the creation and the deluge. 
 
 51. The certainty of some historical duics. The birth of the Saviour. 52. The founding of 
 Rome. 53. Similar examples numerous. The era of the patriarch Job. 54. Interesting truths 
 taught by these examples. 
 
 55. Review of the first portion of our subject the geological history of the globe. 56. The 
 second portion of the history of the antediluvian world proper. Imaginary comparison between 
 early times and our own. 57. Interest and importance of antediluvian history. Conclusion. 
 
 I. 
 
 1. The earliest historical statement that we possess is the simple 
 but sublime declaration that " In the beginning God created the 
 Heavens and the earth." This historic truth carries us back to the 
 antediluvian period of our world's history to a field of inquiry that 
 appears, indeed, at first view, almost an unknown and desert waste, 
 barren of interest to us, shut out from the sympathies of the present, 
 and seemingly devoid of any connection with the subsequent history 
 of our race. But notwithstanding the dearth of materials that 
 might be anticipated from a subject so distant and diminutive in the 
 range of historical vision, we venture to assure the student that it is 
 one from which he may gather something besides doubt, and con- 
 jecture, and idle speculations, and fanciful theories ; one that will 
 serve at least to mark out the true beginnings of historical investi- 
 gation, and from which some light may be reflected on his future 
 course of exploration on the great ocean of human life. 
 
 2. The first declaration of scripture presents to us a subject that 
 is receiving much attention from the learned of the present age. At 

 
 CHAP. L] THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD. 603 
 
 what period was the. earth created was it the work of six days, or 
 of an untold series of ages what does the Bible teach, and what are 
 the revelations of science on these points are questions 
 
 ,, . , ., ,, , ,, ,. \. . . , SCRIPTURAL 
 
 that arise at the very threshold or history, opening sub- ACCOUNT OF 
 jects on which volumes have been written, and with which THE 
 the student of history, as well as the general scholar, 
 may well be supposed to have some familiarity. It will not be inap- 
 propriate, therefore, to present^ in this place, the outlines of this sub- 
 ject to the historical inquirer, and to examine, briefly, how far, and 
 with what degree of certainty, these questions have been answered. 
 
 3. As the sacred historian declares that " in the beginning' 1 God 
 created the heavens and the earth, and then proceeds with an account 
 of the six days' work of the creation, the supposition was not unnatu- 
 ral that the first act of creative power, in calling the materials of the 
 universe into being, immediately preceded the six days' work of or- 
 dering, arranging, and beautifying them as they now exist. This, 
 until recently, has been the popular belief; but many eminent theo 
 logians and philologists of the present day contend that the language 
 of scripture will admit an indefinite interval between the " beginning" 
 of all things, and the perfecting of the great work of creation. As 
 paraphrased by a modern commentator, the scriptural account of the 
 creation would read thus. " In the beginning God created the heav- 
 ens and the earth. And the earth was desolate. Afterwards the 
 spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters;" thus allowing 
 the possibility of even millions of years between the first act of 
 creative power and the six days' work of arranging the universe. 
 
 II. 
 
 4. Admitting that this interpretation does no violence to scripture, 
 the question still remains, are there sufficient reasons for adopting 
 it-? Here the modern science of Geology lends its pow- OEOLOG , CAL 
 erful aid to explain the true meaning of scripture ; and HISTORY OF 
 with an amount of testimony and force of argument not T 
 
 easily controverted teaches that between the first dawnings of creative 
 power, and the completion of the stupendous work which rendered 
 our earth the fit habitation of man, a long an indefinite period 
 must be assigned, whose history is written in characters as enduring 
 as the materials of the globe itself. 
 
 5. The facts on which the geological argument is based are briefly 
 these. An examination of the outer shell or surface of the earth
 
 604 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAKT 111 
 
 has convinced geologists that the earth's surface is not as it was 
 originally created ; but that the different layers or strata of which 
 it is composed are the results of second causes, of a chemical or me- 
 chanical nature. From the present appearances of mountain chains, 
 and chasms, and from artificial excavations, geologists have been en- 
 abled, after an almost incredible amount of labor and research, di- 
 rected by the light of science, to rearrange, measure, and examine, 
 the stratified rocks, which reach to the depth of about ten miles, 
 below which, and of an unknown depth, are the unstratified masses, 
 which show, from their position, and the crystalline arrangement of 
 their parts, the action of heat, and an origin earlier in point of time. 
 
 6. The stratified beds give evidence that they have been formed 
 out of the fragments of other rocks, by atmospheric agencies, and the 
 action of water, that the materials of which they are composed 
 were deposited in the form of mud, and sand, and gravel ; mingled 
 with which were the remains of plants and animals ; and that the 
 several masses were hardened into stone by chemical agencies, as 
 rocks are forming, at the present day, at the bottoms of lakes and 
 oceans. The uppermost of these strata of the earth's shell or sur- 
 face, when the rocks of which they are. composed are broken, are 
 found to contain the fossil remains of plants and animals, nearly all 
 of which, to the number of more than thirty thousand species, be- 
 longed to races different from any that now exist. 
 
 7. Each of these strata appears to mark some important era in the 
 world's history, when some great convulsion of the globe, or sudden 
 change of climate, destroyed the living races, and gave place to a new 
 creation of plants and animals : so that, some half a dozen times at 
 least, the earth appears to have changed its outer form and its inhab- 
 itants. But geology has not the rashness to conjecture the era, far 
 back in the early dawn of time, when the Creator called the materials 
 of our globe into being ; nor to designate the period when his brea.th 
 cooled the liquid fires that had fused them into one homogeneous 
 mass, and his plastic hand, having shaped the rude planet, sent it 
 wheeling through the realms of space, on a journey that shall end 
 _nly when time shall be no more. It is perhaps not too much to as- 
 sert, however, that geology has proved, that, for the formation of 
 each of the successive layers that compose the shell of this mighty 
 ball, untold centuries of years were requisite ; while perhaps tens of 
 thousands of years must be assigned for the gradual development 
 and disappearance of those orders of animal and vegetable life,
 
 CHAP. I] THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD. 605 
 
 whose fossil remains, imbedded in coffins of stone, alone reveal to 
 us the fact of their existence, and of the distant, widely separated, 
 but unknown ages of the world of which they were the only in- 
 habitants. 
 
 8. The geological theory of the great antiquity and gradual con- 
 formation of our globe, which is held by its advocates to be in no respect 
 inconsistent with Revelation, is now generally regarded by the learned 
 as one of the settled principles of science, although it has, indeed, 
 been attacked, as merely hypothetical and unscriptural. Those who 
 oppose the geological theory, while they admit the facts which geolo- 
 gy furnishes, make no serious attempt to explain their causes, which 
 they declare to be beyond the province of geology. The suggestion 
 of various possibilities is all they would leave in the place of the 
 theory which they attempt to overturn. That the Deity, however, 
 when he called the materials of the earth into being, should strew 
 its surface with the apparent fossil remains of races of plants and ani- 
 mals that never existed or that all the seemingly conclusive evi- 
 dences of the gradual operation of natural causes on our earth, through 
 myriads of ages, were miraculous interpositions since the creation of 
 man calculated to cheat us with a mockery of science, and to throw 
 distrust upon Revelation, are inconsistent, to say the least, with our 
 views of the wisdom and goodness of the Creator. That the fossil 
 remains which geology has exhumed from the solid rock, to the depth 
 of seven miles below the earth's surface, were all deposited at so re- 
 cent an epoch as the deluge, by the breaking up of continents in that 
 great catastrophe, and the burying of others beneath the detritus of 
 their remains, is a theory inconsistent with the order in which the 
 fossils are distributed in successive series, and with the fact that the 
 remains of man and of his. works are found only in the uppermost 
 of the earth's strata. 
 
 0. Again, the assertion that the geological theory is derogatory to 
 the Deity, because it ascribes to him the creation of the earth in an 
 imperfect state, countless ages before it was finished for the use of 
 man, seems like an attempt to estimate the years and the works of 
 Him who is without beginning and without end, by the narrow stand- 
 ard of man's existence. For it is as rational to suppose that He, 
 who knew all things from the beginning, and who designed to create 
 or fashion a world for the abode of man at some particular period of 
 time, may have called its primordial elements into being, myriads of 
 ages before, and through the operation of natural causes, may have been
 
 606 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PARI IIL 
 
 gradually forming them into a habitable world, as to suppose that 
 the whole was accomplished in a moment of time, or in six natural 
 days, by the word of his power. 
 
 10. Different opinions, however, prevail among the learned, with 
 regard to the nature, the extent of time, and the date, of the six 
 days' work of creation. While it is the most prevalent opinion that 
 the six days' work of ordering, arranging, and fitting the earth for the 
 abode of man, extended over the entire globe, it has been argued by 
 at least one eminent divine and geologist, that by the term earth in 
 Genesis, is meant only " that part of our world which God was adapt- 
 ing for the dwelling place of man, and for the animals connected 
 with him." This interpretation would admit the possibility of dif- 
 ferent places and periods of creation for the lower animals, and would 
 remove the difficulty of accounting for their distribution from one 
 centre, throughoxit different climates, without a miracle. 
 
 11. In the early period of geological investigation itwas a favor- 
 ite theory that by the " six days" work of creation was not to be un- 
 derstood six literal days, but indefinite periods of time ; as it is said 
 that, with the Almighty, " a thousand years are to be reckoned but 
 as one day." But this interpretation has .very generally given place 
 to that which is in accordance with the literal language of scripture 
 the evening and the morning denoting, literally, the successive days 
 caused by the earth's revolution on its axis. 
 
 12. Such is the brief outline of the geological history of our 
 globe extending back perhaps millions of years, but still infinitely 
 distant, in its beginnings, from the origin of the first Great Cause 
 of all things. Whoever would read this portion of our world's his- 
 tory must look for it in the department of geology, a science com- 
 paratively new, but opening to the student an almost boundless field 
 of research, of deep and absorbing interest. 
 
 III. 
 
 1 3. But having disposed of this subject, we still find that the way 
 is not all clear before us ; for as the compiler of the early history 
 of mankind necessarily draws most of his materials from the Bible 
 record, he will often be met by the sceptic with the assertion that this 
 portion of scripture is allegorical or fabulous ; and that, as a history, 
 it has no valid claims to authenticity. In reply it may be alleged 
 that, separate from the evidence which the scriptures bear, within 
 themselves, of their own verity, a great amount of collateral testi-
 
 CHAP. L] THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD. 607 
 
 mony may be adduced, corroborative of early scripture history ; 
 and it is to this testimony that we now desire to direct the reader, 
 trusting that a general view of the early ages of the world, drawn 
 from other sources than the Bible, will be profitable to students of 
 history, whether regarded as opening new sources of historical infor- 
 mation, with which all should be acquainted, or as furnishing addi- 
 tional means of refuting the cavillings of scepticism and infidelity. 
 
 14. The great leading historical facts which the Bible presents us 
 in the history of the antediluvian world, after the adaptation of our 
 earth for the dwelling place of man, are, 1st. The unity of the human 
 race ; 2d. The institution of a Sabbath, and the arbitrary division of 
 time into weeks of seven days; 3d. The marked distinction between 
 the descendants of Cain and those of Seth, together with the origin 
 of discord, and the history of the struggle that ensued between the 
 two great divisions of the human race the peaceful and pious patri- 
 archs on the one hand, and a giant race of pretended demi-gods on 
 the other ; and, 4th. The Universal Deluge. We would direct at- 
 tention to the character of the evidence corroborative of these lead- 
 ing outlines of sacred history. 
 
 IV 
 
 15. While it is admitted that the descent of all mankind from 
 the same original pair is the doctrine of the Bible, infidelity has at- 
 tempted to array the teachings of philosophy against it. 
 
 The human race is known to consist of five varieties, dis- THE HUMAN 
 playing considerable differences of form and color, and KACE - 
 speaking different languages ; and so striking is the opposition be- 
 tween any two of these varieties, the white and the black in par- 
 ticular, that the supposition of separate origins has seemed, to many, 
 the only philosophical way of accounting for the diversity. But it 
 may be safely asserted that on this subject science can no longer be 
 appealed to as testifying against scripture, for it has been successfully 
 shown that nothing can be inferred, from external peculiarities, 
 against the original unity of the human race. 
 
 16. From extensive researches into the physical history of man it 
 has been ascertained that very marked peculiarities of form and color 
 often arise from accidental causes, and that they are far from being 
 permanent characteristics of races. Among the inhabitants of Hin- 
 dostan known to be of the Mongolian variety, are found groups of 
 people of almost every variety of shade and color : among the Negro
 
 608 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 nations of Central Africa, of intensely black complexion, there are tribes 
 whose features and limbs are as elegantly formed as those of Euro- 
 pean nations ; and in Northern Africa there are unmixed descend- 
 ants of ancient Arab and Jewish families, who have become as black 
 as the surrounding natives. Many similar examples might be men- 
 tioned, furnishing proof that climate, modes of living, and differences 
 of circumstance and situation, are powerful agencies in producing va- 
 rieties of form and color, however slowly the effects may be after- 
 wards eradicated by opposing causes. 
 
 17. The comparative study of languages, by exhibiting striking 
 coincidences of verbal forms and grammatical structure, and by 
 tracing out the paths of ancient migrations, points to the same re- 
 sult unity of origin of the human race. The languages of the 
 earth are grouped into six great families, the subdivision of which 
 have many features in common, viz. : The Indo-European, the Syro- 
 Phenician, the African, the Polynesian, the Chinese, and the Ameri- 
 can. But the Chinese, the American, and the Polynesian, are all 
 based in words of one syllable, as if the process of development had 
 been arrested at an early point; while the other families show a 
 greater advance in the language-forming principle. Moreover, in 
 the various American languages, one hundred and seventy words 
 have been found that are almost identical with the words of the 
 same meaning in the languages of the Old World, while, in grammati- 
 cal structure, sufficient affinities exist among the whole to make a 
 common origin extremely probable. 
 
 18. As additional evidence on this point, the lines in which the 
 principal tribes of the human family appear to have migrated have 
 been traced back, until, in accordance with tradition, they seem to 
 converge to a point somewhere in the region of Central Asia. From 
 this point the Malay race branches off to the south, covering the In- 
 dian Archipelago : the Mongolians radiate to the cast and north, 
 spreading over China and Northern Asia, and sending off the Iled- 
 men of America as a sub-variety : the Indo-Europeans or Caucasians 
 spread away to the north and west, and cover Europe, Northern Af- 
 rica, and the " Isles of the Gentiles;" while the African negro ap- 
 pears as an offshoot of the family of Ham, that migrated westward, 
 along southern Arabia, and through Abyssinia, to Ethiopia. Thus 
 physiology and philology combine to prove the truth of the Bible 
 doctrine of the unity of the human race, and of their central Asiatic 
 origin.
 
 CHAP. L] THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD. 609 
 
 V. 
 
 19. We are told that when the Almighty had finished the work of 
 creation, he rested from his labors ; that thereupon he instituted a 
 Sabbath, or day of rest ; and that every returning seventh INSTITimoN 
 day was to be kept holy, in remembrance of the creator OF A 
 and governor of all things. In accordance with this ac- SABBATH 
 count we might naturally suppose that this divine institution was* 
 known among the antediluvians, and that the observance of it was 
 enjoined by Noah upon his three sons and their posterity. Traces 
 of the same we might expect to find, also, among heathen nations, 
 who, although they hud lost the knowledge of the true God, would 
 be apt to interweave, in their own crude systems of mythology, the 
 traditionary religious rites of their fathers. And such has, evidently, 
 been the case. It appears that the Israelites, during their sojourn in 
 Egypt, neglected the observance of the Sabbath ; yet the Egyptians, 
 a heathen people, and ignorant of the Sabbath as a day of rest, di- 
 vided time into weeks of seven days, and the days they consecrated 
 to the seven planets; a system of dividing time, which, singularly 
 enough, we find among the Greeks, the Romans, the Hindoos, the 
 Goths and Germans, and, partially, among the Saxons. 
 
 20. Our Saxon ancestors, a heathen people, divided time into weeks 
 of seven days ; and our names of the days of the week are of heathen 
 and not scriptural origin. Thus the day which the heathen nations 
 of Northern Europe dedicated to the worship of the sun the first 
 day of the week, we still call Sun-day, a name which the puritanical 
 notions of our New England fathers rejected, as profanely impious, 
 and in its place adopted the Jewish appellation the Sabbath. The 
 second in order is Monday, or Moon-day, the day dedicated to the 
 moon : 3d, we have Tuesday, from Tuisco, the Saxon God of war : 
 hence Tuesday, in old English, is court day, the day for legal com- 
 bat, or for commencing litigation. The 4th, is Wodin's-day, from 
 Wodin, or Odin, another Saxon divinity. The 5th, is Thursday, 
 that is, Thorns-day, the day consecrated to Thor, the God of Thunder, 
 answering to the Jupiter of the Greeks and Romans. The 6th, is 
 Friday, the day of Freya, a divinity corresponding to the Grecian 
 Venus ; and the 7th, is Saturday, the day of Sater or Saturn, the 
 most ancient of the gods worshipped by the Greeks and Romans, 
 and known to our Saxon ancestors by the name of Seatur. 
 
 21. Thus we find here an intermingling of different systems of my- 
 thology : we find Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Hindoos, Goths, Ger-
 
 610 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAKT III. 
 
 inans, and Saxons, retaining the scriptural division of time, which 
 they have introduced into their own religious systems ; and even 
 these latter, we shall find, have certain prominent analogies running 
 through them, all traceable, for their origin, in their prominent fea- 
 tures, to scripture history itself. None will deny that this custom 
 of dividing time, so prevalent among different and widely-separated 
 heathen nations, must have had an early and a common origin ; and 
 what one so satisfactory can be assigned, as that to which the Bible 
 attributes it ? 
 
 22. In memory also of the primeval work of creation and the di- 
 vision of time into weeks of seven days, not only did each of the 
 principal festivals of the Jews continue a week, but even among 
 heathen nations, as well as among the Jews, sacrifices appear most 
 frequently to have been offered by sevens. When Balak called on 
 Balaam, the Chaldean diviner, to curse the people of Israel, the latter 
 commanded seven altars to be built, and seven rams to be prepared for 
 the sacrifice. In Virgil, the Cumtean sibyl, who was the guide of j?Eneas 
 to the lower world, directs the hero to haste the sacrifice with " seven 
 bullocks, and seven unspotted ewes." The heathen poet Hesiod 
 3alls " the seventh a holy day ;" and Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, 
 speaking of the seventh day, says, " All heathen writers distinguish 
 it ; but most are ignorant of the reason why." 
 
 VI. 
 
 23. We now pass to the consideration of another subject to which 
 we have alluded as a leading historical fact' in the Bible records of 
 
 the antediluvian world , the origin of discord, and the 
 history of the struggle between the pious patriachs and 
 their descendants in the line of Seth on the one hand, 
 and the giant race of the descendants of Cain on the other. While 
 sacred history describes minutely the origin of discord, in the fra- 
 tricide of Cain, it barely mentions the flight of that restless criminal 
 to 'the country eastward of Eden, the name of the city which he 
 founded, and the seven generations of his descendants, who are char- 
 acterized as a haughty and wicked race of giants. The early tra- 
 ditions of the Asiatic nations, however, although overlaid with 
 poetical ornament, and rudely adorned with gigantic hyperbole, the 
 whole wearing, at first sight, a purely fabulous aspect, yet abundant- 
 ly fill up, with much of the clearness of historic truth, the outlines 
 which are so briefly sketched by the sacred penman. The Asiatics
 
 CHAP. I] THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD. 611 
 
 very generally trace their origin to one or the other of two brothers, 
 who, by their contentious, transmitted the seeds of strife and future 
 wars to their descendants. It is true the chequered tablet of tradi- 
 tion presents much chronological confusion, and many interpolations 
 of later history interwoven with ancient narrative ; but even this di- 
 versity often corroborates and illustrates the main truth the more fully 
 and forcibly. Thus, one Asiatic nation, describing itself as descend- 
 ed from the elder of the first two brothers of mankind, sets forth the 
 circumstances of their enmity in a party spirit highly favorable to 
 its progenitojr, who is represented as having been driven from the pa- 
 ternal home, and compelled to take refuge in the East, by the envy 
 of his younger brother. And to what source, we may ask, can the 
 many heathen traditions of fraternal strife between the early pro- 
 genitors of mankind be attributed so confidently as to the accredited 
 history of Cain and Abel ? ' Among the Greeks and Romans the 
 origin of discord is referred to the goddess of that name ; and the 
 classical scholar will hardly fail to recognize, in the fable of the 
 golden apple thrown into the festive assembly of the gods, and its 
 results of discord, enmity, strife, and war, among the race of mortals, 
 the preservation of a truth of sacred history, the origin of evil, 
 and the fall of our first parents from a state of innocence and purity. 
 24. Indeed, the opposition, the discord, and the struggle between 
 the two great divisions of the human race, with religion and truth, 
 on the one hand, and impiety on the other, form the whole tenor of 
 primitive history. The wise and peaceful patriarchs, blessed with 
 long life, which they spend in pastoral simplicity and innocence, are 
 everywhere described, in the traditions of Eastern nations, as an- 
 noyed, harassed, and often overcome, by a proud, wicked, and violent 
 race, of pretended denii-gods. The chief subject of the grand epie 
 poems of Hindoo mythology is this war of opposing races. Wicked 
 nations of giants attack the Brahminical races descended from the 
 virtuous patriarchs, and the latter are assisted by divinely-inspired 
 heroes, who achieve many wonderful victories over these formidable 
 foes. Grecian philosophers have embodied the same legend in the 
 fable of the war of the Giants against Jupiter, and of the Heaven- 
 storming Titans against their father Saturn. But the Greeks great- 
 ly enlarged and beautified the tradition received by them from the 
 Eastern nations, by representing these opposing states the virtuous 
 an-d the violent as the gradual decline and corruption of mankind; 
 going down from the Golden age of human felicity, through many
 
 612 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III 
 
 transitions, to the Brazen age of all-ruling violence, disorder, and 
 crime. At this period in the history of the human family, the Bible 
 tells us that God punished the wickedness of mankind by one univer- 
 sal flood. But the vivid imagination of the Greeks stopped not 
 here : they closed the period of human existence by the Iron age, in 
 which they themselves lived the last term of man's progressive de- 
 generacy. 
 
 25. It is the common belief that tradition is the only source of 
 early profane history, and especially of the history of the antediluvi- 
 ans ; but many circumstances render this supposition quite improba- 
 ble. Eminent scholars maintain that Moses was not the first histo- 
 rian, and that in the book of Genesis may be seen evidences of 
 several original records, which the Hebrew lawgiver used in making 
 his compilation. Again, Job is supposed to have been an Arabian, 
 and not a Hebrew ; and his probable epoch is placed from six hun- 
 dred to eight hundred years before that of Moses. But Job says : 
 " Oh that my words were written ; Oh that they were printed in a 
 book," evidence sufficient to show that in the time of Job, long be- 
 fore Moses compiled the Pentateuch, books, or manuscript records, 
 were not unknown. 
 
 VII. 
 
 26. It is not improbable that the antediluvians were acquaint 
 COINCIDENCES e( l with a system of writing, and had written annals, 
 
 BETWEEN which survived the deluge ; and this supposition is 
 PROFANE strengthened by the striking coincidences that are found 
 HISTORY, to exist between the Mosaic records of the antediluvian 
 
 world, and those found in the writings of Sanchoniatho and Berosus, 
 
 the most ancient of profane historians. 
 
 27. Only a few fragments of the writings of Sanchoniatho have 
 been handed down to us. He is said to have been a Phoenician ; and 
 by some he is supposed to have lived in the twelfth or thirteenth 
 century before the Christian era, while others make him cotemporary 
 with Gideon, a judge of Israel, and others, still, carry him back to 
 the era of the Assyrian queen Semiramis. This writer, in his Phoe 
 nician history, gives us a list of eight antediluvian generations, the 
 same number that is found in scripture, commencing with " Proto- 
 gonos" and his wife " Aion," corresponding with Adam and Eve, and 
 continuing down, in the line of Cain, to Jubal and Tubal Cain, where 
 the list of the antediluvians ends ; but the genealogy is resumed
 
 CHAP. I] THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD. 613 
 
 again, after the deluge, with Agros, a word signifying " a- husband- 
 man' plainly the representative of Noah. 
 
 28. As the basis of the Phoenician system of idolatry, this pagan 
 writer has evidently introduced the same events and the identical 
 personages mentioned in the scripture record. We indeed know of 
 the writings of Sanchoniatho only through the medium of their 
 translation into Greek ; but the original signification of terms has 
 doubtless been retained in the translation. Thus the name of the 
 first man, Protogonos, signifies " first-born." The first human pair 
 are said to have been begotten of Wind and Night, or the " Spirit 
 of the Wind," and the " Chaos of Darkness ;" and the Arabic version 
 of the Bible reads that " a mighty wind blew upon the face of the 
 waters," to bring order, and light, and life, out of chaos and darkness. 
 
 29. Sanchoniatho represents Aion as first plucking fruit from trees 
 for food : plainly alluding to the transgression of Eve in eating of 
 the forbidden fruit. The account of Sanchoniatho, down through 
 seven generations after the deluge, although involved in much mysti- 
 cism relating to the worship of heavenly bodies and deified men, bears 
 a striking analogy to the Bible record, showing that it could not have 
 been wholly the result of mythological fiction. 
 
 30. But the writings of Berosus, a Chaldean by birth, and prince 
 of Belus at Babj'lon, who lived in the time of Alexander the Great, 
 are of still deeper interest, as confirmatory of the truth of scripture 
 history. He possessed every advantage which the ancient archives 
 preserved in the temple of Belus, and the learning and traditions of 
 the Chaldeans, could afford ; and his works were held in the highest 
 repute by Josephus, Eusebius, Pliny, and other writers. Unfortu- 
 nately, only a few fragments of his writings are preserved. 
 
 31. Berosus gives an account of the creation, and of the early 
 ages of the world, corresponding, in a very striking manner, with the 
 Mosaic record. He also gives a list of ten kings who reigned in 
 Chaldea before the deluge, and records ten generations of men after 
 tne deluge conformably to the scripture account down to the time of 
 Abraham. The name of the first king given by Berosus, corre- 
 sponds in meaning with that of one of the antediluvian patriarchs of 
 Sanchoniatho ; the one signifying " Artificer of light, or of fire" 
 and the other, the " God of light, or of fire;" corresponding with the 
 Vulcan of the Greeks and Egyptians, and, in point of chronology, with 
 the Lamech of scripture. 
 
 32. The most ancient of the gods of the Chaldeans was the same as
 
 '614 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAKT III. 
 
 the Saturn of the Romans, and the Kronos of the Greeks, a word 
 which appropriately signifies the " God of Time," or the " Ancient of 
 Days," a name given to Jehovah himself. But the Greek poets and 
 xuythologists appear to have confounded their god Kronos with the 
 Noah who was saved from the deluge, and among whose three sons 
 the earth was divided. Carrying out the mythological fiction, to the 
 three sons of the god the Greeks ascribed a division of the dominion of 
 the universe. To Jupiter (or Japheth) was given Heaven, or the 
 Northern regions : the sea, or Middle regions, was assigned to Nep 
 tune, (or Shern,) and Hell, or the southern regions, to Pluto, (or Ham,) 
 in conformity with the geography of the Greeks, placing the north 
 pole above, and the south pole below, the horizon. 
 
 33. As farther illustrative of the manner in which "scripture his- 
 tory is often found interwoven with heathen mythology, it may be 
 mentioned that Nimrod, " the mighty hunter before the Lord," and 
 the founder of Babylon, after his w death was worshipped as a god by 
 the Chaldeans, and was supposed to be translated into the constella- 
 tion Orion, attended by his hounds, and still pursuing his favorite 
 game, the "Great Bear" changed into a constellation also. In 
 Grecian mythology the constellation Orion is represented as a war- 
 rior of gigantic stature wielding a sword. The Arabian name of this 
 constellation signifies " giant," or " hero." The English term warrior 
 is almost identical in form and pronunciation with the Greek oarion 
 (oapiuv) an early name of Orion. Moreover, in an ancient Hindoo 
 statue, where Nimrod, or Orion, is ceiled Bala Rama, from Baal or 
 Belus, he is represented with a thick cudgel in his right hand, and 
 his shoulders covered with the skin of a tiger ; and it is believed 
 that the scripture Nimrod, the Assyrian Baal, and the Hindoo Bala t 
 were but the prototype of the Grecian Hercules, with his club and 
 lion's skin. Thus the true scripture history of that " mighty hunter" 
 Nimrod has given rise to many a wild legend in Hindoo, Greek, and 
 Arabian mythology t giving the hero a renown wider than his fame 
 while living ; and when Earth could not sufficiently honor him, he is 
 translated to the Heavens, where he still shines as a brilliant constel- 
 lation of glories near the southern horizon. 
 
 34. But among the* numerous and wide-spread traditions, which, 
 
 even amid the gross darkness of heathenism, still pre- 
 
 TRADITIONS = ' r 
 
 OF THE serve the great outlines of primitive history, and corrob- 
 
 DELUGE. ora te the truth of the scripture narrative, none are more 
 
 satisfactory than those which relate to the destruction of mankind by a
 
 CHAP. L] % THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD. 615 
 
 universal deluge.. There has scarcely been found a heathen nation 
 or tribe, in all the wide extent of the eastern hemisphere among 
 the islands of the sea, or throughout our own vast continent from 
 Greenland to Patagonia, which did not possess some traditionary 
 record of this closing act in the drama of the antediluvian world. 
 
 35. For the traditions of the Asiatics on this subject we again re- 
 fer to the Chaldean historian Berosus, and give the account which 
 he compiled from the archives preserved in the great temple of the 
 gods of the Chaldeans. " In the reign of Xisuthrus, the last of the 
 antediluvian kings," says Berosus, " the great deluge came upon the 
 earth. Saturn, (or God,) appeared to Xisuthrus in a dream, and 
 told him that on the fifteenth day of the month Daesius mankind 
 should be destroyed by a flood. Therefore he commanded him to 
 write a history of the origin, progress, and end of all things, and to 
 bury the writings underground, in Sipparae, the city of the sun. Then 
 he ordered him to build a ship, and to enter into it with his kindred 
 and friends, and also to store the vessel with provisions, and to take 
 into it fowls and four-footed beasts ; and when he had thus provided 
 everything, if he should be asked whither he intended to sail, he should 
 say, To the Gods, to pray for tJie happiness of mankind. 
 
 36. " Xisuthrus did not disobey the divine command, but built a 
 vessel five furlongs in length and two furlongs in breadth ; and hav- 
 ing got all things in readiness, he put on board his wife, children, 
 and friends. Then the flood came upon the earth ; and after it be- 
 gan to abate, Xisuthrus let out certain birds, which, finding no food, 
 nor a place to rest upon, returned again to the ship. After some 
 days he let out the birds again, but they came back to the ship a 
 second time, having their feet daubed with mud ; but being let out a 
 third time, they returned no more to the ship, whereby Xisuthrus 
 understood that dry land had appeared. Then he opened the sides 
 of the ship, and seeing that it rested on a certain mountain, he 
 went out with his wife and daughter, and pilot ; and after he had 
 worshipped, and built an altar, and sacrificed to the Gods, he, and 
 those who went out with him, disappeared. But they who had stayed 
 in the ship, finding that Xisuthrus and his companions did not return, 
 went out to seek them, calling them aloud by name. Xisuthrus, 
 indeed, was seen by them no more ; but his voice was heard issuing 
 from the air, and commanding them, as their duty, to be religious ; 
 and informing them that he himself, on account of his piety, was 
 gone from them to dwell with the Gods ; and that his wife, daughter,
 
 '016 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 and pilot, were partakers of the same honor. He tyld them, forte. r, 
 that they should go again to Babylonia ; and that it was ordained 
 for them to take the writings from Sipparae, and communicate them to 
 mankind. He added that the place where they were was in Armenia. 
 When they heard this they offered sacrifice to the Gods, and then 
 went to Babylonia. And when they came thither they dug up the 
 writings at Sipparse, built many cities, created temples, and rebuilt 
 Babylon." 
 
 37. Such is the Chaldean account of the deluge, once believed in 
 by numerous pagan nations throughout a large portion of Central 
 Asia. If we pass to Greece, we find there, also, some faint records of 
 the same great event of primitive history, in the traditionary accounts 
 of the deluge of Deucalion. The fable relates that when Jupiter 
 designed to destroy the brazen race of men on account of their iui 
 piety, Deucalion, prince of Thessaly, by the advice of his father, made 
 himself an ark, and, putting provisions therein, entered it with his 
 wife Pyrrha. Jupiter then poured ram from heaven, and inundated 
 the greater part of Greece, so that all the people, except a few who 
 escaped to the lofty mountains, perished in the waves. Deucalion 
 was carried along the sea in his ark or vessel during nine days and 
 nights, until he reached Mount Parnassus. By this time the rain 
 had ceased, and leaving his ark, he sacrificed to Jupiter, who sent to 
 him Mercury, the messenger of the Gods, desiring him to ask what- 
 ever he wished. His request was to have the earth replenished with 
 men. By the direction of the oracle, thereupon he and his wife 
 threw stones behind them, and those which Deucalion cast became 
 men those thrown by Pyrrha became women. Plutarch says, " The 
 early mythologists assert that a dove, let fly from the ark. was to 
 Deucalion a sign of bad weather if it came in again of good weather 
 if it flew away. According to the Latin writers the deluge over- 
 spread the whole earth, and all animal life perished except Deucalion 
 and Pyrrha, who were conveyed in a small boat to the summit of 
 Mount Parnassus, as some say; but, as others relate, to Mount ./Etna." 
 
 38. When the genius of Columbus led to the discovery of a new 
 world across the wide Atlantic, even there, by the rude Indian in 
 the very solitude of the American forests, as well as among the 
 semi-civilized Mexicans and Peruvians, where the Bible was never 
 known, nor the name of Jehovah ever uttered, were preserved traces 
 of the inspired record of the Jewish lawgiver. A Mexican tradition 
 preserved by Clavigero, Humboldt, and others, relates that, at the
 
 CHAP. I.] THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD. 617 
 
 i 
 
 time of the great deluge, Tezpi, with his wife and children, embarked 
 in a calli or house, taking with him several animals, and the seeds of 
 different fruits ; and that when the waters began to withdraw, a bird 
 called aura was sent out, which remained feedingjipon carrion ; and 
 that other birds were then sent out, which did not return, except the 
 humming-bird, which brought a small branch in its mouth. Another 
 tradition relating to the building of the great Mexican pyramid at 
 Cholula, by a race of giants, asserts that the gods, beholding with 
 wrath the attempts to build an edifice whose top should reach the 
 clouds, hurled fire upon the pyramid, by which numbers of the 
 workmen perished. In one of the Mexican picture writings is a de- 
 lineation of a venerable looking man, the Mexican Noah, who, with 
 his wife, was saved in a canoe at the time of the great inundation, 
 and, upon the retiring of the waters of the flood, was landed upon a 
 mountain called Colhuacan. Their children were born dumb ; and 
 different languages were taught them by a dove from a lofty tree. 
 The wide-spread Algonquin nation, extending over most of the 
 country eastward of the Mississippi, and embracing numerous tribes 
 speaking different languages, preserved a tradition of the original 
 creation of the earth from water, and of a subsequent general in- 
 undation. The Iroquois tribes of New York likewise had a tradition 
 of a general deluge, but from which they supp'osed that no human 
 being escaped ; and that, in order to repeople the earth, beasts were 
 changed into men. One tribe held the tradition, not only of a gen- 
 eral deluge, but also of an age of fire, which destroyed every human 
 being except one man and one woman, who were saved in a cavern. 
 
 39. The Tamenacs, a nation in the northern part of South America, 
 say that their progenitor, Amalivica, arrived in their country in a 
 bark canoe at the time of the great deluge, which is called the age 
 of water. This tradition, with some modifications, was current 
 among many tribes ; and the name of Amalivica was found spread 
 over a region of more than forty thousand square miles, where he 
 was termed the " Father of mankind." The aboriginal Chilians say 
 that their progenitor escaped from the deluge by ascending a high 
 mountain, which they still point out. The natives of New Granada 
 have a tradition that they were taught to clothe themselves, to worship 
 the sun, and to cultivate the earth, by an old man with a long flowing 
 beard ; but that his wife, less benevolent, caused the valley of Bogota 
 to be inundated, by which all the natives perished, except a few wh^o 
 were saved on the mountains^
 
 618 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PABT III. 
 
 40. These traditions, and many others of a similar character that 
 might be mentioned, form an important link in the chain of testimo- 
 ny which goes to substantiate the authenticity of the writings of the 
 early Jewish historian Moses. To prove this portion of the Bible 
 record true, is a point gained by the historian, and one that has an 
 important bearing on the philosophy of subsequent history. And 
 with reference to the character of the historical portion of the proof 
 the only portion to which we have alluded, we may safely assert 
 that no one can rationally account for the similarity and the univer- 
 sality of these traditioary legends of a universal deluge, but by the 
 supposition that all were derived from one and the same original 
 source from the positive knowledge which mankind once possessed, 
 of the actual drowning of a wicked world. Early dispersion of the 
 primitive families the formation of tribes the rise of distinct na- 
 tions, and the growth of different languages, would pervert the stream 
 of history from its legitimate channel ; and while the traditions of 
 so important an event as a universal deluge would be preserved 
 among people however rude and barbarous, they would naturally be 
 varied in detail and changed in locality, as we find them, owing to 
 the propensity of mankind to signalize their own countries and their 
 own ancestors. 
 
 41. If the sceptic assert that those traditions of the Old World 
 to which we have referred were derived from the fabulous religious 
 books of the Jews, the assumption will not, assuredly, account for 
 those, equally wonderful, found among the American aborigines. 
 We behold the unlettered tribes of a vast continent, who have lost 
 all knowledge of their origin, or migration hither, preserving, with re- 
 markable distinctness, the apparent tradition of certain events which 
 the inspired penman tells us happened in the early ages of the world's 
 history. We readily detect in several of these traditions, clouded 
 though they are by fable, a striking coincidence with the scriptural 
 accounts of the creation and the deluge, while in others we think we 
 see some faint memorials of the destruction of the " cities of the 
 plain" by " fire which came down from heaven," and of that " con- 
 fusion of tongues" which fell upon the descendants of Noah in the 
 plains of Shinar. If the scriptural account of the deluge, and the 
 saving of Noah and his family, be only a " delusive fable," at what 
 time, and under what circumstances, it may be asked, could such a 
 fable have been imposed upon the world for a fact, and with such im- 
 pressive force that it should be credited as true, and transmitted, in
 
 CHAP. I] THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD. 619 
 
 many languages, through different nations, and successive ages, by 
 oral tradition alone ? Those who can admit the supposition of cre- 
 dulity so universal, have no alternative but to reject the evidence de- 
 rived from all human experience, and, with a world of testimony 
 weighing against them, to stand forth the irrational advocates of 
 infidel unbelief. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 42. We have thus passed, very cursorily, over the most prominent 
 subjects connected with the history of the antediluvian world: we 
 have called the attention of the student to the geological 
 
 theory of the antiquity of our globe the nature of the A!fCI 
 
 J . CHKONOiOGY. 
 
 six days' works of creation the unity of the human race 
 the leading facts of antediluvian history presented in the Bible, with 
 some of the collateral testimony corroborative of them the anal- 
 ogies between the early histories of all nations, showing a common 
 origin of their mythological legends and the traditionary and his- 
 torical evidences of a general deluge. "We might here, appropriate- 
 ly, bring this chapter to a close, but the importance of establishing 
 the date of the deluge, reminds us that this is a fitting opportunity 
 to call the attention of the student to the general subject of ancient 
 chronology. 
 
 43. One of the greatest difficulties which the modern critical com- 
 piler of ancient history has to encounter, is that of deducing from 
 the great variety of dates which different writers have assigned to 
 the same events, a system of chronology that shall not be inconsist- 
 ent with the best lights of history, and that shall, at the same time, 
 harmonize with the revelations of modern science. The hope of en- 
 tirely avoiding errors which future learning and research may not 
 detect, would be presumption ; and all that can reasonably be re- 
 quired of the historian is, that he shall adopt the best accredited 
 chronology of his predecessors, with such corrections as later investi- 
 gation may have rendered reasonable. It is a matter of much re- 
 gret, however, that while the antiquarian researches of the learned 
 have established a standard of ancient chronology, which, by the 
 amendments it is occasionally receiving, is gradually approximating 
 nearer and nearer to truth and reason, the great mass of modern 
 compilers of ancient history, editors, and publishers, still blindly ad- 
 here to some of the old systems of chronology, which have long been 
 discarded by the learned. The evidently widely-erroneous dates of
 
 620 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 [PART IIL 
 
 the creation and the deluge that are still retained in the margins of 
 our modern Bibles, and in our histories, are cases in point, showing 
 the tenacity with which printed and venerated error is adhered to by 
 the mass of mankind. We are aware that most people have been led 
 to regard everything embraced within the cover of a Bible as inspired 
 truth, ignorant that nearly the whole of Bible chronology, not con- 
 tained in the text, but in the margin, is but the result of the compu- 
 tations of fallible men like themselves. If there is danger that the 
 enunciation of the truth in this matter will weaken some innocent 
 prejudices, and impair a slight portion of the veneration with which 
 the sacred volume has been regarded, there 'is much greater danger, 
 on the other hand, that while the Bible chronology is received as a 
 portion of the word of God, its irreconcilableness with modern de- 
 velopments in science will furnish the sceptic and infidel with avail- 
 able arguments against the truth of Revelation itself. 
 
 44. To illustrate the chronological difficulties that beset the path 
 of the historical inquirer at the outset, we will refer to some of the 
 conflicting dates assigned by different writers to a few important 
 events in the early history of the world. The marginal date given 
 in an English Bible for the Creation, (by which is meant the creation 
 of Adam,) 4004 years before Christ, and which is taken from the 
 chronological system of- Archbishop Usher, an eminent Irish divine, 
 is only one among some three hundred different computations for that 
 epoch : the highest of which, that of the celebrated Swiss historian, 
 Von Muller, dates that event 6984 years before Christ ; and the lowest, 
 that of the Jewish Rabbi Lipman, 3616 before Christ ; a difference 
 in the extremes of more than three thousand and three hundred years. 
 The numerous dates assigned for the Deluge, a more important histor- 
 ical epoch, are almost equally conflicting, and, as a matter of some in- 
 terest as well as curiosity, we compile a list of ten of the most prominent, 
 with the authorities for each, beginning with the highest computation : 
 
 Septuagint Version of the Bible 3246 B. C. 
 
 Jackson, (Antiquities & Chronology) 3170 " 
 Dr. Hales, (a celebrated English di- 
 vine and chronologist) 3155 " 
 
 Josephus, (the Jewish historian) 3146 " 
 
 Persian Computation. 3103 
 
 Samaritan text of the Bible 2998 B. 0. 
 
 Playfair 2352 " 
 
 Usher, and English Bible 2348 
 
 Hebrew text of the Bible ., . 2288 
 
 Vulgar Jewish Computation 2104 u 
 
 45. Here we find a difference in the extremes of no less than 
 eleven hundred and forty-two years ; and it is not improbable that 
 subsequent hieroglyphical discoveries in Egypt, will yet render certain
 
 CHAP. I.] THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD. 621 
 
 a date prior to any here given. For the Exodus of the Israelites 
 from Egypt we find ten prominent dates assigned by the learned, 
 ranging from 1312 to 1686 B. C., differing, in the extremes, three 
 hundred and seventy-four years. And coming down to a later period, 
 where there are seemingly more reliable data, we find similar dis- 
 crepancies. For the supposed destruction of Troy we find ten promi- 
 nent dates assigned by different writers from 904 to 1270 B. C. 
 a difference of three hundred and sixty-six years : for the overthrow 
 of Nineveh dates varying between 596 and 896 B. C., a difference 
 of three hundred years, : for the founding of Kome six dates, varying 
 from 627 to 753 B. C., a difference of one hundred and twenty-six 
 years ; and even for the nativity of the Saviour no less than ten dif- 
 ferent years have been assigned, from the year seven before the 
 vulgar era, to the third year after. 
 
 46. It may be doubted by many that the dates assigned for the 
 Creation (by which we mean the creation of Adam, the first of the 
 human family) and the deluge, events so remote, can be anything 
 more than mere conjecture ; as many of the uninitiated in science 
 doubt the ability of astronomers to calculate the distances and orbits 
 of the planets ; but, fortunately for the cause of historic truth, the 
 proofs in the former case are much more easy of comprehension to 
 the uneducated than in the latter. And in the first place we will 
 endeavor to show, briefly, why the common era of the deluge is 
 probably erroneous, and the necessity of assigning that event to a 
 more remote epoch, which, at the same time, shall not conflict with 
 the testimony of authentic Revelation. 
 
 47. The epoch of the deluge is calculated by scripture chronology 
 backward from the nativity of the Saviour, through the successive 
 generations of the human family as they are recorded in the Bible ; 
 and the creation of Adam, backward, in a similar manner, from the 
 deluge. If the successions and ages of the several generations in 
 this chronological chain were plain, and no apprehension existed of 
 interpolations or retrenchments by the hand of man, the results 
 would be easily attained, and incontrovertible ; but neither of these 
 postulates can be assumed. Some partial links in the chain have to 
 be supplied by human calculation : yet the errors that might thus 
 accrue would doubtless be small ; but, as if to obliterate the only 
 reliable landmarks, and throw all into inextricable confusion, the 
 several versions of scripture differ considerably in their chronological 
 results ; and here is the great source of uncertainty and error.
 
 622 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 48. Tn the time of Josephus, the first century after Christ, the 
 sacred scriptures were found only in Hebrew and in Greek the 
 latter, called the Septuagint version, being a copy of the former. 
 From the Hebrew, Josephus translated his Jewish Antiquities into 
 the Greek language ; at which time, as there is every reason to be- 
 lieve, the genealogies of the antediluvian patriarchs, and of the de- 
 scendants of Noah, were the same in the Hebrew as in the Greek 
 version of the Bible, with both of which the computations of Josephus 
 evidently corresponded. Subsequently, however, a remarkable dif- 
 ference has arisen between copies of the Hebrew and of the Grecian 
 text, in the lengths of the successive generations, amounting to at 
 least six hundred years in the records of the antediluvian world, and 
 seven hundred in the subsequent period. 
 
 49. When, by whom, and in what versions of the scriptures, the 
 chronological errors were introduced, has long been a subject of in- 
 vestigation with the learned ; and a variety of evidence, of a highly 
 interesting character, has at length been adduced, proving that, while 
 the Septuagint has remained essentially unchanged, the chronology 
 of the Hebrew text has been perverted at different times by the 
 Jews, that the prophecies concerning the advent of the Saviour might 
 not appear to be fulfilled, and that the reality of the Christian Mes- 
 siah might thereby be disproved. The chronology of Usher, which 
 was adopted in the margin of the English Bible by act of Parliament, 
 is based, principally, on the Jewish systems and the Hebrew text, 
 instead of the Septuagint; but it has been relinquished by the 
 ablest chronologers of the present time, principally on account of its 
 irreconcilableness with the rise of the primitive empires ; the As- 
 syrian, the Egyptian, the Indian, and the Chinese all of which sug- 
 gest earlier dates for the deluge. 
 
 50. Moreover, recent hieroglyphical discoveries in Egypt prove 
 very conclusively that the deluge must have occurred many centuries 
 before the date usually assigned to it, (2348 B. C.,) for we are now 
 able to trace the outlines of Egyptian history back as far as that 
 period ; but even at that time the Egyptian monarchy must have 
 been already old, for the greatest of the pyramids was then in ex- 
 istence, quarries had been worked, mines explored, the arts and 
 sciences cultivated, and tombs had been quarried in the rocks for 
 thousands and perhaps millions of the departed. Dr. Hales, one of 
 the ablest of modern chronologists, dates the era of the creation at 
 5411 B. C., and of the deluge at the year 3155 ; but it is not im-
 
 CHAP. I] THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD. 623 
 
 probable that subsequent researches will render it necessary to carry 
 these events back farther still. 
 
 51 . While some of the conflicting dates which we have enumerated 
 still mnain unsettled, and open for further investigations of the 
 learned, others have become fixed almost beyond the possibility of 
 error, as is the case with the important historical epoch of the nativity 
 of the Saviour, and the founding of Rome. The true date of the 
 birth of the Saviour is determined from the following circumstances. 
 From scripture we learn that Christ was born a short time before 
 the close of the reign of Herod ; and the death of Herod is calculated 
 from an eclipse of the moon, which is incidentally stated by Josephus 
 to have occurred a few days before that event. Chrysostom, Petavius, 
 Prideaux, Playfair, &c., followed by Dr. Hales in his Analysis of 
 Chronology, date the birth of the Saviour seven hundred and forty- 
 nine years after the founding of Rome, or four years earlier than the 
 common or vulgar era. 
 
 52. Whether Romulus, the attributed founder of Rome, be a 
 fabulous personage or not, there must have been some event handed 
 down by tradition, as the origin of the city ; and that event is marked 
 by Cicero and Plutarch as having occurred on a day when there was 
 a total eclipse of the sun. Here again modern astronomy comes to 
 the aid of history, and, tracing back the sun's pathway through the 
 heavens, finds there was an eclipse of the sun visible at Rome, B. C. 
 July 5th, 753, and thus establishes the era, whether real or fabulous 
 it matters not, to which early tradition refers the origin of the 
 " eternal city, Rome." 
 
 53. We might adduce numerous other instances, equally interest- 
 ing, in which the light of astronomical science, as far reaching into 
 the gloom of the past as the telescope, its handmaid, into the regions 
 of space, has rendered brilliant, with the certainty of truth, portions 
 of history hitherto enveloped in the obscurity of gloom and con- 
 jecture. Who would have thought that modern astronomy could 
 have anything to do with fixing the era in which the patriarch Job 
 lived ? It is known that, owing to a small annual variation in the 
 path of the ecliptic, the sun's place among the constellations of the 
 zodiac, at any given season of the year, is now greatly different from 
 what it was in remote ages. Job alludes to some of the constella- 
 tions in such a manner as to designate, with much probability, the 
 postions, relative .to the ecliptic, which some of them occupied in hia 
 time ; and the learned chronologist, Dr. Hales, professes to have as-
 
 624 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III 
 
 certained, by a very interesting astronomical calculation on the pre- 
 cession of the equinoxes, that the time of Job's trials was in the year 
 2337 B. C. ; or eight hundred and eighteen years after the deluge, 
 and one hundred and eighty-four years before the birth of Abraham. 
 
 54. Jf history is the preserver of the records of the sciences, the 
 latter often repay the boon by verifying the annals of the former ; 
 and how beautifully do the examples we have given illustrate the 
 truth, that all the fragments of varied knowledge are but 
 
 "parts of one stupendous whole, 
 Whose body Nature is, and God the soul." 
 
 IX. 
 
 55. In closing this brief sketch of antediluvian history, we may 
 well linger for a moment to cast a parting glance over the vast field 
 passed so rapidly in review before us. 
 
 From this habitable world now covered with verdure and filled 
 with life and beauty, imagination, directed by science, carries us back 
 through the long vista of ages unnumbered and almost numberless, 
 to a period ere the fiat of the Almighty called light and life into 
 being; when the materials of our globe, probably in a state of 
 vapor, were floating in darkness in the " vast contiguity of space ' 
 now lighted up by the sun, and moon, and worlds of our planetary 
 system. In the first stage of change, this mass of vapor, gradually 
 condensing, becomes a melted globe of fire ; and as age after ago 
 passes away, the surface, cooling, forms a crust, ever and anon broken 
 by the gases that escape from the burning mass below. But as 
 myriads of years roll by, the crust thickens until it becomes habit- 
 able for those rude orders of vegetable and animal life that mark the 
 first era in the geological history of our globe. Here are seen the 
 first " foot-prints of the Creator ;" and here geology begins its interest- 
 ing record of life and death, of growth and decay. But race after 
 race of animal and vegetable life must pass away, mountains and con- 
 tinents be thrown up by internal fires from the beds of the ocean, 
 again to be submerged, and to rise again, and again, as one mighty con- 
 vulsion succeeds another, before the earth shall be rendered fit for 
 the habitation of man. 
 
 56. The second portion of our subject the history of the antedi- 
 luvian world proper embraces a period of more than two thousand 
 years, extending from the creation of man to the deluge ; a period
 
 CHAP. II.] THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD. 625 
 
 nearly as long as that which intervened between the deluge and the 
 Christian era. For the history of the human race during this long 
 period, we have only a few pages of the Bible, but authenticated, in 
 all their leading features, by the collateral testimony of universal 
 tradition. In vain we look beyond this simple record, and would 
 seek to know more to learn something of the extent, and the num- 
 bers, of the population of the globe the kind of civilization 1 and the 
 empires that arose and fell, ere the deluge swept away our guilty race, 
 and their memorials with them. Judging from what the Bible tells 
 us, that " there were giants in those days," and that men lived to an 
 age of several hundred years, we might infer that everything in those 
 early times was on a scale of stupendous magnitude ; and that we 
 are a pigmy and ephemeral race in comparison with our antediluvian 
 fathers. The fabulous portions of the history of the oldest Asiatic 
 nations of Egypt and of Greece suggest the same comparison : 
 for they magnify the kings of their early dynasties into gods, some 
 of whom are said to have reigned on the earth a thousand years. 
 
 57. But apart from uncertain conjecture, antediluvian history is of 
 exceeding interest as being the evident source whence the heathen, as 
 well as the Christian world, has derived its knowledge of an omnipa- 
 tent Creator ; and as the source whence paganism has derived the 
 materials that have served as the foundation on which to build its 
 own systems of mythology. And thus while man was departing wider 
 and wider from the knowledge of the true God, he still adhered to 
 the great principles of eternal truth which the God whom he had 
 forsaken had taught him. Those great traditionary legends which 
 the pride and impiety of a heathen world had set up in opposition to 
 the true religion, still prove to be diverging rays of light which 
 centre in the throne of the Eternal. Thus God has made the tra- 
 ditions of the heathen to confirm his own revealed Word, and the 
 very wickedness of man to praise him. 
 
 4U
 
 626 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 EARLY EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, AND BABYLONIAN CIVILIZATION 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. EXCLUSIVE POLICY OF THE EARLY EGYPTIANS. Our earliest information 
 respecting Egypt. Dense population. CHARACTER OF THE TESTIMONY OF HERODOTUS. 2. 
 The THREE GRKAT EGYPTIAN DYNASTIES. That of Saturn and his successors. Of the eight 
 demi-gods. Of the subsequent kings. 3. The first period wholly fabulous. The second 
 period. 4. Character of EGYPTIAN HISTORY FROM MENES TO JOSEPH. Our knowledge of the 
 condition of the people during that period. Light thrown upon the subject by the interpreta- 
 tion of the hieroglyphics. 
 
 5. EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS. The French expedition to Egypt in 1798. The Rosetta tab- 
 let. 6. Construction of the hieroglyphic alphabet, and translation of the hieroglyphics. 7. v 
 Three-fold character of the hieroglyphic writing. Illustrations. Supposed manner in which 
 the changes occurred. Difficulty of interpretation. 8. Various peculiarities of the Egyptian 
 system. 9. The three classes of the hieroglyphic writing, hieroglyphic proper, hieretic, and 
 demotic. 10. The hieroglyphics in the Coptic language. Theological and historical writings. 
 11. Results of the translations of the hieroglyphics. 12. Confirmatory o-f portions of Manetho's 
 history. Manetho's writings. Their character. 13. The founding of the pyramids. 14. Great an- 
 tiquity of the hieroglyphics and of the pyramids. 15. Both in existence before the time of Moses. 
 
 16. Supposed Ethiopian origin of THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF EGYPT, and of Egyptian civ- 
 ilization. 17. Supposed antiquity of Ethiopian civilization. 18. Asiatic origin, and migration, 
 of the Ethiopians. 19. The opposing theory. Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Hebrews, probably 
 fraternal tribes. 
 
 20. DWELLINGS AND PUBLIC EDIFICES OF THE EGYPTIANS. The arch, and the Greek orders 
 of architecture. 21. Knowledge obtained from EGYPTIAN SCULPTURES AND PAINTINGS. His- 
 torical sculptures found at Thebes. 22. Great extent and variety of Egyptian paintings and 
 sculptures. 23. The painting rude but durable. Stationary character of Egyptian art. 24. 
 Sculptural representations of dress, musical instruments, &c. The Muses of Egyptian origin. 
 25. ASTRONOMICAL KNOWLEDGE of the Egyptians. 26. Their attainments in MECHANICAL 
 SCIENCE. Construction of the pyramids. 27. The ART OF WEAVING. 28. The WORKING OF 
 METALS, &c. 29. Manufacture of pottery, glass-ware, potash, wine, &c. Embalming. Chem- 
 istry. 30. Household furniture, musical instruments, tools of artisans, &c. Surveying. 31. 
 SCIENCE OF MEDICINE. 32. Advanced state of civilization shown by division of labor. 33. 
 Evidences of the LITERARY ATTAINMENTS of the Egyptians. 34. DIVISION INTO CASTES, or 
 tribes. 35. The Egyptian hierarchy 36. The RELIGION OF THE EGYPTIANS. Animal worship. 
 37. The religious temples of the Egyptians. 38. General reverence for certain animals. The 
 bull Apis. 39. Worship of crocodiles, serpents, and cats. 40. Oracles, and gods, of the 
 Egyptians. 41. Origin of animal worship among the Egyptians. 42. Symbolical or emblemat- 
 ical character of the religion of the Egyptians. 
 
 43. Scantiness of the MATERIALS OF ASSYRIAN HISTORY. Chronological obscurity, and con- 
 flicting accounts. Scripture testimony. 44. The writings of Herodotus and Ctesias. 45. Gen 
 eral rejection of all but scripture testimony. Relations which Nineveh and Babylon sustained 
 to each other. Our knowledge of Nineveh. 4G. Assyrian history from Nimrod to Ninus. 
 From Ninus to Sardanapalus. 47. Conflicting accounts relative to Ninus and Semir' amis 48. 
 Our knowledge of ASSYRIAN CIVILIZATION. Babylon a century before the time of Herodotus. 
 Its buildings, streets, temples, &.C. Nothing incredible in the statements of Herodotus. 49. 
 Means of judging of the civilization of the Assyrians. Their acquaintance with the higher de- 
 partments of science. Sculpture, painting, mechanics, religions opinions, &c. Chemical art. 
 Astronomy. 50. The early acquisition of habits of regular industry. How obtained. Natural 
 tendencies and results of such a system. Individual degradation. The contrast between 
 , Assyrian and Grecian civilization. 51. CONCLUSION.
 
 CHAP. IL] EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 627 
 
 I. 
 
 1. So completely did Egyptian jealousy exclude all foreign ves 
 sels from the mouths of the Nile, that Egypt remained 
 a perfect terra incognita to the Greeks until the reign PO LIOY OF 
 of Psammetichus, (672 618 B. C.,) when a more liberal THE EAELY 
 
 EG YPTIAXS 
 
 policy towards foreigners was adopted. Our earliest in- 
 formation respecting the country* is derived from Herodotus, the 
 father of Greek historians, who visited Egypt in the latter part of 
 the fifth century before the Christian era, when it formed part of one 
 of the twenty Persian satrapies. At that time the delta was full of 
 large and populous cities communicating with each other and the 
 Nile by a net-work of canals ; and the priests, in describing to Herod- 
 otus the unrivalled prosperity which, they affirmed, Egypt enjoyed 
 under the last king before the Persian conquest, said there were then 
 twenty thousand cities in the country. As to what Herodotus him- 
 self saw, in both Assyria and Egypt, he is a guide per- 
 fectly trustworthy ; but what he and others relate on OF THE TES . 
 the authority of the Chaldean and Egyptian priests TIMONY OF 
 
 1 11 1 i- 1 A 1 -n HERODOTUS. 
 
 alone, especially in relation to early Assyrian and Egypt- 
 ian history and chronology, is, in part, to be discarded as wholly fabu- 
 lous, and the rest to be taken with a very great degree of abatement. 
 Still it is interesting to know what the priests themselves taught, 
 and the common people, at least, believed on these subjects. The 
 fabulous early history of Greece and Rome is perhaps less absurdly 
 extravagant, but no more authentic. 
 
 II. 
 
 2. From the rude fragments of Egyptian annals that have been 
 handed down to us from various sources, the various gov- 
 ernments of Egypt, both fabulous and real, like those GREAT 
 of the oldest countries of Asia, may be divided into three EGYPTIAN 
 great dynasties : First, the mythological rule of the 
 gods : Second, the rule of demi-gods ; and Third, the rule of men. 
 Saturn, or Kronos, and his successors, comprising the twelve prim- 
 ary divinities, who are said to have reigned during a period of nearly 
 four thousand years, are supposed by many to refer to the patriarchal 
 generations from Adam to Noah, as recorded in the fifth chapter 
 of Genesis. The eight demi-gods, whose rule commenced some two 
 hundred years or more after the flood, and who are said to have
 
 628 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART TIL 
 
 reigned in Egypt during a period of two centuries, are supposed to 
 have comprised the priestly government of Misruim and his success- 
 ors, to the time of Menes, when the rule of thirty-one successive 
 Egyptian families commenced, embracing three hundred and seventy 
 eight kings, and terminating with the conquest of Egypt by Alex 
 ander, three hundred and thirty-one years before the Christian era. 
 
 3. Everything relating to the first period, or dynasty, is bare con- 
 jecture, based on the crudest fables. The second period,' although 
 subsequent to the deluge, extends so far back into primeval antiquity, 
 and has so little connection with the Bible record, that nought but 
 the existence of Misraim can be satisfactorily determined. The 
 fact of the existence, however, of such a person, who early settled in 
 Egypt, is, with a strong degree of credibility, gathered from the 
 Bible, supported by tradition and the earliest Egyptian chronicles ; 
 but whether Misraim be the same as Menes, as many have main- 
 tained, or, as is now more generally believed, a priestly ruler who 
 lived some hundreds of years before him, is still a matter of un- 
 certainty among the most learned chronologists and antiquarians. 
 
 4. Of the reign of Menes, and of subsequent events down to the 
 
 time when Joseph ruled over Egypt, embracing a long 
 HISTORY but indefinite period, we have nothing sufficiently reliable, 
 FROM MENES either in the names of kings, the order of their succession, 
 or the events of their reigns, to deserve the appellation 
 of genuine history; and what has been written on these subjects 
 consists of a mass of conflicting opinions, rather than of statements to 
 which the authors themselves attached any great degree of credibili- 
 ty. Fortunately, however, we have information more reliable and 
 satisfactory, and of a character highly interesting, concerning the 
 social character and condition of the people, and the progress they 
 had made in the arts of civilized life ; and these subjects deserve the 
 greater degree of attention from the very obscurity that rests upon 
 all those great public and political events which would otherwise 
 have formed the principal materials of Egyptian history. Recently 
 much light has been thrown upon the early history of Egypt by the 
 interpretation of the hieroglyphics inscribed on the monuments, 
 tombs, and temples of that country. A brief account of the discov- 
 eries thus made will appropriately introduce the reader to the evi- 
 dences that can be gathered of early Egyptian civilization.
 
 CHAP. IL] EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 629 
 
 III. 
 
 5. The Frencli expedition into Egypt, under Bonaparte, in 1798, 
 accompanied by a corps of artists, naturalists, and antiquarians, 
 brought back a large number of copies of the hieroglyph- EGYPTIAN 
 ics found on the monuments of that country, and thus HIEEO- 
 gave a new stimulus to the prosecution of hieroglyphical GLYPHICS - 
 science. From these collections alone, however, it is probable that 
 no discoveries of the real character of the hieroglyphics would have 
 been made ; but there was also discovered, near Rosetta, an engraved 
 tablet, which has been called the Rosetta stone, bearing three inscrip- 
 tions ; the first, in the Egyptian hieroglyphics, or " sacred writing," 
 but partly mutilated ; the second in a different style of Egyptian 
 writing, such as appears to have been used by the common people ; 
 and the third in ancient Greek. This stone fell into the hands of the 
 English, and is now in the British museum in London. The Greek 
 inscription proved to be a translation of the others ; and thus, finally, 
 a Jccy was found, which afforded the first clue to the deciphering of 
 the long lost meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphics. 
 
 6. But although the greatest scholars of the age directed their at- 
 tention to this interesting tablet, yet owing to the exceedingly com- 
 plex system of the Egyptian writing, and the circumstance of its 
 being in the ancient Coptic language, it was many years before much 
 progress was made in the construction of the hieroglyphic alphabet. 
 The honor of this great discovery is principally due to a learned 
 Frenchman, Champollion, although he was greatly aided by the labors 
 of Dr. Young of England, and others of his cotemporaries. The 
 great discovery of Champollion was made public in the year 1822, 
 since which time nearly all the known Egyptian hieroglyphics have 
 been translated into the languages of modern Europe. 
 
 7. The hieroglyphic Egyptian writing, instead of being composed, 
 as in other languages, wholly of alphabetical letters expressing vocal 
 sounds, is found to be of a three-fold character, pictorial, symbolical, 
 and phonetic. For example : 1st. The delineation or picture of an 
 object is sometimes designed to convey an idea of that object, and 
 nothing more ; thus, a crescent is sometimes used to represent the 
 moon, and stands in place of the word moon ; and, in the same man- 
 ner, the leaf of the palm is used to represent the palm-tree. 2d. The 
 delineation or picture of an object is sometimes used symbolically 
 to convey to the mind the meaning of something represented by it. 
 Thus the crescent is also sometimes used to denote a month, probably
 
 630 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III 
 
 because the Egyptian month was originally lunar ; and the leaf of 
 the palin to denote a year, probably because the palm was believed 
 to put forth a branch every month. 3d. A large portion of the hiero- 
 glyphic characters are phonetic, that is, they are letters designed to 
 represent vocal sounds, as in our own and other languages. But 
 even these phonetic characters are, many of them, pictures of well- 
 known objects ; so that, apart from the pictorial and symbolical por- 
 tions of the system, the phonetic portion that is, the alphabet 
 proper consists of a series of pictorial representations also, which 
 have lost their original pictorial signification. It is probable, there- 
 fore, that the Egyptian system of writing was, originally, like the 
 Mexican, wholly pictorial ; that many of the pictorial signs or rep- 
 resentations, by a natural transition, were afterwards used symbol- 
 ically, and, eventually, phonetically, thus producing the three-fold 
 system as we now find it. Here then is the first difficulty to be en- 
 countered in interpreting Egyptian hieroglyphics, even after the sys- 
 tem is understood : for it must be ascertained in what particular 
 sense pictorial, symbolical, or phonetic every character is to be 
 taken : for a character may stand, pictorially, for an object, or, sym- 
 bolically, for something associated with it, or, phonetically, for some 
 sound to which it has been appropriated. 
 
 8. A second peculiarity of the Egyptian system of writing is the 
 subjoining, to the phonetic name of an object, of a pictorial repre- 
 sentation of the object denoted by the name. Thus, to the names 
 of persons, the figure of a man is subjoined : to the verb " to dance," 
 is subjoined the representation of a man dancing. A third peculiar- 
 ity is, that most of the elementary vocal sounds have more than one 
 sign ; thus forming, in reality, several different alphabets. Again, 
 the writing is sometimes in horizontal, and sometimes in perpendic- 
 ular lines : sometimes it is to be read from right to left, and some- 
 times from left to right ; but it has been ascertained that the begin- 
 ning is designated by the direction in which the heads of the animal 
 figures are turned. 
 
 9. Moreover, in addition to the three-fold character already men- 
 tioned, there are found to be three distinct classes of hieroglyphical 
 writing, viz. : first, the hieroglyphic proper, or " sacred sculptured 
 characters," probably the most ancient form, found principally on 
 the monuments : 2d, the hieratic, derived from the former, with such 
 changes as were necessary to adapt the stiff and angular "forms of the 
 hieroglyphics to rapid writing. In the hieratic form many of the
 
 CHAP. IL] EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION, 631 
 
 pictorial and symbolical characters of the sculptured hieroglyphics 
 are dropped, as being too cumbersome for writing, and consequently 
 the phonetic use prevails. The hieratic appears to have been in 
 current use before the year 1500 B. C. 3d. After the Persian con- 
 quest, 525 B. C., the knowledge of the hieroglyphic and hieratic ap- 
 pears to have been confined mostly to the priests ; and a new form, 
 called the demotic, which was an adaptation of the hieratic to still 
 more expeditious writing, came into general use. It may be regard- 
 ed as the vulgar idiom, or writing of the people. At first view the 
 hieroglyphic, the hieratic, and the demotic, appear to be entirely dif- 
 ferent and distinct systems ; but a close examination detects the 
 same general forms pervading all of them. 
 
 10. The language in which the hieroglyphics are written is doubt- 
 less an ancient form of the Coptic, of which the more modern Coptic, 
 which has long ceased to be spoken, is an idiom ; for many of the 
 hieroglyphic words are not found in the known vocabulary of the 
 Coptic, and the meaning of such words must therefore be gathered 
 from the context. Much of the hieroglyphic literature of the Egypt- 
 ians is of a theological and mystical nature ; and here the obscurity 
 of the subject renders interpretation doubly difficult ; but the histor- 
 ical writings are more easily read, and they have the advantage of 
 being illustrated, in most cases, by pictorial representations. It is 
 by no means surprising, considering all the peculiarities of the 
 Egyptian hieroglyphics, that no clue was found to their interpretation 
 until the discovery of the Rosetta tablet ; and it is truly wonderful 
 that so much has since been accomplished, as we have evidence of in 
 the developments recently made in early Egyptian history. 
 
 IV. 
 
 11.. The results of the translation of the hieroglyphics found on 
 Egyptian monuments, tombs, temples, &c., show a very great and 
 undoubted antiquity of the Egyptian nation, and prove that these 
 same hieroglyphics (then a perfect system) were in general use in 
 Egypt as far back at least as the time of the erection of some of the 
 early pyramids probably two thousand three hundred years, at 
 least, before the Christian era ; while the origin of the art is lost in 
 those distant ages, of which neither history nor tradition has pre- 
 served any record. 
 
 12. The Egyptian hieroglyphics go far towards confirming the 
 veracity of certain portions of ancient chronicles of great interest,
 
 632 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 especially the latter part of those of Manetho, which had hitherto 
 been generally rejected by the learned. This Manetho was an 
 Egyptian priest and historian, who lived in the third century before 
 Christ. He wrote a history of Egypt, in which he gave an account 
 of the country from the earliest times down to his own day, com- 
 prising, subsequent to the rule of the gods and demi-gods, a list of 
 thirty-one dynasties and three hundred and seventy-eight kings. 
 Some, without wholly rejecting Manetho's account, have supposed 
 that the earlier dynasties were fabulous : others, that they reigned 
 simultaneously in different parts of Egypt ; while others still, taking 
 the entire list of kings in consecutive order, and the chronology of 
 Manetho without abatement, thus extend back the period of the 
 founding of the Egyptian monarchy more than five thousand years 
 before the Christian era. Any rational view, however, that can be 
 taken of scripture chronology, would seem to forbid this extension ; 
 and indeed there seems to be little reason for accepting either the 
 number of Manetho's kings previous to the sixteenth dynasty, proba- 
 bly in the twenty-third century before Christ, or the length of their 
 reigns. But it is surprising that the monumental records found in 
 Egypt within the last few years, confirm Manetho's account, up to 
 this period, in a most extraordinary manner ; while here and there 
 scattered fragments on ancient monuments give the names of some of 
 Manetho's kings prior to that period ; but as the list is not complete 
 there is nothing to confirm the earlier portion of this writer's chronology. 1 
 13. The name of the founder of the greatest Egyptian pyramid, 
 and the supposed date of its erection, prior to the time of Abraham, 
 are gathered from a mass of concurring testimony. Manetho at- 
 tributes the founding of the great pyramid to Suphis ; Herodotus to 
 Cheops, and Eratosthenes to Saophis, or Shoopho, three names, 
 which, in different languages, and in different modes of spelling, are 
 
 1. It appears highly probable that Manetho constructed his history, or at least the earlier 
 portions of it, upon a regular system of chronology arranging both the divine history, and the 
 human dynasties which succeeded it, so as to fill up an exact number of Sothiac cycles, that is, 
 periods of the/ star Sirius, each comprehending one thousand four hundred and sixty Julian 
 years, equal to one thousand four hundred and sixty-one Egyptian years. Knowing that a 
 Sothiac period ended in 139 A. D., and of course began in 1352 B. C., we find the third pre- 
 ceding Sothiac period must have begun in 5702 B. C., which coincides with the year in which 
 Manetho places Menes, the first human king of Egypt. Manetho assigns twenty-four thousand 
 eight hundred and thirty-seven years, previous to Menes, to the rule of the gods and demi- 
 gods ; and this long time comprehends exactly seventeen Sothiac periods of one thousand four 
 hundred and sixty-one Egyptian years each. 
 
 This is the hypothesis of Boeckh, a recent German writer, (1845,) although, in order to produce 
 these results, some corrections of Manetho's figures have been found necessary.
 
 CHAP. II ] EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 633 
 
 redizcible to the same as the Grecian Cheops. Thus far, historically, 
 ancient writers, corroborated by Egyptian traditions, attribute the 
 founding of this great pyramid to the same individual. Again, in 
 the year 1837, the name and the title of this same Cheops or Shoopho 
 were found in hieroglyphics, in the quarrier's marks in a chamber of 
 the great pyramid, evidently placed there while the structure was in 
 process of erection, confirmatory evidence that Shoopho was then 
 ruling monarch of Egypt. 
 
 14. The name of Shoopho has also been found among the ruins of 
 Thebes, and on various tablets throughout Egypt, and even in the 
 vicinity of some ancient copper mines in the peninsula of Mount 
 Sinai, showing that, at the era of this monarch's reign, and at the 
 time of the erection of the largest of the pyramids, whenever that may 
 have been, the hieroglyphic system was in common use in Egypt. The 
 exact date of Shoopho's reign has not yet been ascertained, but he 
 is placed by Manetho in the fourth dynasty of Egyptian kings ; and 
 it is conclusive from other testimony that he belonged to a dynasty 
 prior to the sixteenth, and the latter is supposed to have commenced 
 in the twenty-third 1 century before Christ, at least two or three hun- 
 dred years before the time of Abraham. According to Manetho, 
 some pyramids were erected during the reign of the fourth king of 
 the first dynasty, thus carrying back the antiquity of the greatest of 
 those works of art to a date nearly five thousand years ago. 
 
 15. Many hundred years, therefore, before the time of Moses, the 
 early sacred historian, the Egyptians had reared those pyramidal 
 structures to which modern times can show no parallel. Before the 
 time of Moses, also, a perfect system of writing was common in the 
 land of Egypt, which strengthens the supposition previously advanced, 
 that the history of events prior to the time of Moses, as gathered 
 from the Pentateuch, instead of having been dictated by immediate 
 Revelation, as some have supposed, was a compilation, by an in- 
 spired writer, from earlier annals or records, of the existence of which 
 much circumstantial evidence might be adduced. 
 
 V. 
 
 16. Of the early inhabitants of Egypt little can be learned either 
 from tradition or history ; and conflicting opinions have 
 
 been entertained of the origin of Egyptian civilization. By INHABITANTS 
 most writers, the arts and sciences known in Egypt have OF EaTPT - 
 
 a. Gliddon's Egypt. Also Kenrick's Egypt, voL ii.
 
 634 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAST HL 
 
 been traced to the upper valley of the Nile, the country anciently 
 called Ethiopia, but now embraced in Nubia and Abyssinia. Meroe, 
 (Mer-o-we,) the capital of Ethiopia, was an extensive city, which is 
 supposed to have stood on the eastern bank of the Nile, a little north 
 of the present Shendy, where may still be seen the ruins of a few 
 temples and other edifices. To this city the earliest Egyptian and 
 Ethiopian legends trace the origin of Thebes, and other cities of 
 Upper Egypt ; the ruins of the Ethiopian temples show the Egyptian 
 style of architecture ; the Ethiopians, according to ancient writers, 
 claimed the invention of the arts and philosophy of Egypt ; both 
 nations had the same system of religion ; and Ethiopian princes are 
 known to have occupied the throne of the Pharaohs.. 
 
 17. And indeed, could the annals of ancient Ethiopia be now 
 spread before us, it is highly probable that they would be found not 
 inferior, either in interest or importance, to those of Assyria and 
 Egypt. There is little doubt that Ethiopia was one of the earliest 
 seats of civilization ; for in the earliest traditions of the East the 
 Ethiopians are mentioned, and by the earliest writers they are placed 
 in the first ranks of knowledge and refinement. At a very remote 
 period they carried on a considerable trade with the people of southern 
 Asia ; and Isaiah speaks of the " merchandise of Ethiopia" in a man- 
 ner that renders it evident that the Ethiopians were, in his day, a 
 highly commercial people. 
 
 18. By those who believe that the Egyptians are descended from 
 the Ethiopians, it is supposed that the latter, migrating, at an early 
 period, westward from the Euphrates, reached the straits of Bab-el- 
 mandeb,* whence they passed over into Africa, and settled in the 
 higher valleys of the Nile, and there founded Meroe, the early capi- 
 tal of Ethiopia. A confirmation of this opinion of their origin is 
 drawn from the striking resemblance which has been found to exist 
 between the usages, arts, superstitions, and religion, of the early 
 Ethiopians and the inhabitants of western Asia. 
 
 19. Others, on the contrary, who suppose that the early Egyptians 
 migrated directly from the Euphrates to Egypt, by way of the Isth- 
 mus of Suez,f make that part of Ethiopia, which had Meroe for its 
 capital, a province of Egypt ; but whichever theory prevail, the early 
 
 * -The strait of Bab-el-mandeb, (signifying, literally, the gate of tears,) unites the Red Sea with 
 the Indian Ocean. The distance across, from a projecting cape on the Arabic shore to the op- 
 posite coast, is about twenty miles. 
 
 t The Isthmus of Suei, connecting Asia and Africa, is a sandy waste, between the Meditor 
 ranean and th 8 northern extremity of the Red Sea, about seventy miles across.
 
 CHAP. II] EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 635 
 
 Ethiopians and Egyptians were undoubtedly fraternal tribes of the 
 Caucasian race ; although perhaps the former were a shade darker 
 than the latter. Neither, however, belonged to the Negro race. a 
 The Hebrews were a people of fair complexion, and yet they inter- 
 married with the Egyptians ; for Solomon married a daughter of 
 Pharaoh, and Moses married the daughter of an Egyptian priest ; 
 and these events are recorded without any intimation that the nuptials 
 were between those of different races. From the physical character 
 of the Egyptians, as learned from the innumerable skulls gathered 
 from the catacombs of Thebes, no evidence has been adduced that 
 the Egyptians bore any considerable resemblance to the negro, nor 
 does it appear that they differed materially from Europeans. 
 
 VI. 
 
 20. It is supposed that the first inhabitants of Egypt dwelt in 
 rocky caves, found in great numbers in the mountain ranges on both 
 sides of the Nile : that when the natural caverns became 
 
 7 . DWELLINGS 
 
 insufficient for the growing population, artificial ones AND PUBLIC 
 were formed in the soft limestone ; and that, as the skill EDIFICES - 
 of the workmen increased, harder materials were used for the public 
 edifices, and, finally, the imperishable granite, of which the temples 
 and palaces were constructed. It is believed also, that in this pro- 
 cess can be traced the origin and principles of Egyptian architecture. 
 The walls and columns of the public edifices appear to have been 
 built of rude rocks, smoothed only on the surfaces of contact, the 
 pillars, of enormous diameters, resembling the rude supports of the 
 roofs of mines and quarries, or of the dwellings of the people. The 
 walls were worked into shape by one general process, after their 
 erection ; and the column, with all its decorations, was finished after 
 it was set up. The entrances and openings of these buildings were 
 few ; and their interiors were as dark and gloomy as the primitive 
 caverns themselves. The arch, both round and pointed, an invention 
 which, until recently, has been attributed to the Greeks, was certain- 
 ly known to the Egyptians as early as the fifteenth century before 
 the Christian era. Even the Gh'eek orders of architecture, as they 
 are called, more especially the Doric and Corinthian, can all be 
 traced to Egyptian originals. Doric columns, equalling the finest to 
 be seen in Grecian temples, have been found of a date as early as the 
 
 a. See Gliddon's Egypt. Quotes Morton's "Crania .figyptiaca." See, also, Anthon's Clas. 
 Diet., articles ^Egyptus and ^Ethiopia.
 
 636 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAKT III. 
 
 reign of Osortasen the first, who is believed to have ruled over Egypt 
 in the twenty-first century before the Christian era,three hundred years 
 before Grecian history had a beginning. a The very name of this 
 Egyptian monarch was unknown to history until brought to light by 
 the labors of Champollion and his associates. 
 
 21. Of the state of the arts and manufactures among the early 
 Egyptians, of their history, religion, and government, and of the do- 
 mestic condition and usages of the people, much informa- 
 
 SCULPTURES 
 
 AXD tion has been obtained from the great variety of paint- 
 PAINTINGS. - n g g an( j sculptures found in the temples, and in the 
 numerous depositories of the dead, a kind of testimony far more 
 reliable than traditions, or the vague chronicles of the early his- 
 torians. Amid a numerous succession of halls and galleries in a 
 ruined Theban palace of great magnificence, there have been found 
 elaborate sculptures exhibiting the conquests of an Egyptian sov- 
 ereign, the sacrifices which he had offered, his administration of jus- 
 tice, and other acts becoming the ruler of a great nation. His tomb 
 was adorned with astronomical emblems representing the number of 
 days in the year, the changes of the seasons, and the motions and 
 periods of the heavenly bodies, while his epitaph proclaimed : " I am 
 Osymandias, b king of kings : if any one desires to know what a 
 prince I am, and where I lie, let him excel my exploits." 
 
 22. But paintings and sculptures of this character were not con- 
 fined to relations of the deeds of princes only ; they are found on 
 the tombs of citizens, and they enter into details of the private lives 
 of the people, vividly portraying the employments and amusements 
 of those to whom they refer, and figuring the forms of every article 
 of furniture, of buildings and ships and carriages, of the tools of arti- 
 sans and the implements of husbandry, and of everything, in short, 
 pertaining to civilized life. To these sources we are indebted for 
 much of the reliable information we possess of the social character 
 of the Egyptians, and it is gratifying to know that this monumental 
 evidence is corroborated by the descriptive accounts, so far as they 
 go, of Herodotus and other early writers. 
 
 23. The paintings of the Egyptians were indeed rude, showing 
 little knowledge of the rules of perspective ; but in the durability of 
 
 a. Of the three principal Grecian orders of architecture, the Ionian alone has not been found 
 on any Egyptian monument. "It was probably of Assyrian origin, as it has been tound in the 
 remains of Nineveh." KenricK's Egypt, i. 215. 
 
 b. Jackson, " Antiquities and Chronology of the Ancient Kingdoms," ii. p. 396-402, supposes 
 this king to be the same as Sesostris. See also Hale's Chronology, i. p. 37.
 
 CHAP. II] EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 637 
 
 their coloring they excelled all works of modern art. Colors that 
 are supposed to have been in existence more than three thousand 
 years, are still apparently as fresh as if laid on but an hour ago. 
 The Egyptians, however, like the Chinese, appear to have remained, 
 from the earliest period, nearly stationary in the rules of painting and 
 sculpture. Conformity to ancient usages, probably sanctioned and 
 enforced by regulations of the priesthood, seems to have fettered the 
 genius of Egyptian artists and prevented its development. 
 
 24. On one of the sculptured tablets found in Egypt were repre- 
 sented 'men, women and children, prisoners of war, with dresses 
 similar to those worn by the most ancient Greeks, and one of the 
 captives bore in his hand a Greek lyre, of the oldest known model. 
 Other tablets exhibited the drilling and disciplining of soldiers, the 
 details of agricultural occupations, and of domestic economy, and the 
 labors of all kinds of artisans and mechanics. Games of amusement 
 are exhibited similar to many played at the present day ; and several 
 sculptures have been found representing vocal and instrumental con- 
 certs, in which were performers on the flute and flageolet, the trumpet 
 and tamborine, and singers of both sexes assisting with their voices. 
 The Muses, personifications of the inventive powers of the mind, 
 were long believed to have been of Grecian origin ; but they were 
 known in Egypt before Greece had a name or a history. 
 
 25. The astronomical monuments of the Egyptians show that as 
 early as the eighteenth dynasty, perhaps 1600 B. C., they had divid- 
 ed the ecliptic into twelve parts of thirty days each ; and ASTRONOMI . 
 the priests appear to have known, at an early period, CAL 
 nearly the true length of the solar year, although they ^ZDGE. 
 did not apply it to the popular calendar, which enumerated three 
 hundred and sixty-five days to the year, and omitted the intercala- 
 tion of one day in four years. The Egyptians recorded eclipses with 
 less astronomical accuracy than the Chaldeans. "Whether they were 
 able to calculate their recurrence, or not, is a disputed question. It 
 is known that they made careful observations of the aspect and posi- 
 tion of the heavenly bodies ; but it was for astrological rather than 
 astronomical purposes. It is supposed that they were not acquaint- 
 ed with the precession of the equinoxes, which was a discovery of the 
 Greek Hipparchus ; although the obliquity of the ecliptic was known 
 to them. The position of the pyramids, exactly facing the four 
 cardinal points, shows that they had the means of tracing an accurate 
 meridian line, for which, however, little astronomical knowledge is
 
 638 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAET IIL 
 
 necessary. In the Egyptian paintings and sculptures, no representa- 
 tions of astronomical instruments have been found ; and, on the 
 whole, the Egyptians appear to have made less advance in astro- 
 nomical science than has generally been attributed to them. 
 
 26. Notwithstanding the erection of those vast structures, the 
 pyramids, and temples, and obelisks, there is no evidence that the 
 Egyptians had made any great attainments in mechanical science, or 
 
 that they were even acquainted with all the mechanical 
 S ' ICAL powers now known. Simple machinery, combined with 
 
 SOIENCk. * 
 
 an unlimited command of human power, might have ac- 
 complished the greatest of the works of Egyptian art. Herod' otus 
 was informed by the Egyptian priests that the stones of the pyramids 
 were elevated from one layer to the other " by the aid of machines 
 constructed of short pieces of wood," which some suppose to have 
 been the lever, and others the pulley ; but it does not appear certain 
 that any representations of the pulley have been found among the 
 varied pictures of early Egyptian life. a Diodorus suggests the 
 probable construction of mounds of sand, up which stones were 
 drawn. This supposition derives some countenance from the known 
 process, which Pliny describes, of elevating the architraves of the 
 temple of Ephesus over bags of earth, which served as an inclined 
 plane. 
 
 27. Of the various occupations of civil life, represented iu the 
 Egyptian paintings, the most common is that of weaving, which ap- 
 pears to have been the employment of great numbers of 
 
 ART OF ^ e p e0 p} 6j an( j principally of the men, and which was 
 carried on in large establishments or manufactories. 
 Vestments of fine linen were known as early, certainly, as the days 
 of Joseph, who made presents of changes of raiment to his brethren. 
 The mummies, both of men and animals, were thickly enveloped' in 
 linen ; so that, in connection with what was worn by the people, the 
 quantity manufactured must have been surprising. 
 
 28. But in the working and compounding of metals, especially 
 
 brass, the Egyptians appear, in some respects, to have 
 ' F excelled the moderns. They had war chariots of brass, 
 
 .Mr, 1 AL.>j (xC. 
 
 or bronze ; and swords, bows, and arrows, of the same 
 material, which they had the art of rendering elastic, like steel, and 
 
 a. " A pulley from an Egyptian tomb is preserved in the Leyden museum, but its age is un- 
 certain." Kenridc's Egypt, i. 228. Layard's Nineveh, ii. 247, Note, referring to the same cir 
 cumstance, says, " The pulley was known to the Egyptians."
 
 CHAP. II.] EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 639 
 
 of enabling them to resist the corroding effects of the atmosphere. 
 Among the ruins of Thebes have been found gold and silver banquet- 
 ing cups, tureens, urns, and vases, of the most elegant forms and ex- 
 quisite workmanship. To such a pitch of refinement was the work- 
 ing of the precious materials carried by the Egyptians, that the 
 Greeks even did not excel them, nor have the moderns made any 
 great improvements on these antique models. 
 
 29. In the manufacture of pottery the Egyptians displayed a skill 
 not inferior to that of the Greeks ; they also manufactured white and 
 colored glass, from which they made artificial gems of extraordinary 
 beauty. They prepared lime, as we do, by burning calcareous stones; 
 they extracted potash from cinders ; they made wine, vinegar, and 
 even beer ; while their method of embalming, which they appeared 
 disposed to shroud in great mystery, is an additional confirmation of 
 their chemical knowledge. It was also probably owing to the great 
 advances made in the knowledge of chemistry and physics, from 
 which had arisen the art of natural magic, that the necromancers of 
 Egypt were enabled to contend so successfully with Moses as to 
 deceive those who witnessed their juggling experiments. 
 
 30. The couches of the Egyptians, their seats, tripods, baskets, 
 &c., were of elegant patterns ; their musical instruments exceeded in 
 variety those of modern times ; while the implements employed in 
 the various trades, having been imitated by the Greeks, were', many 
 of them, exceedingly similar to those employed in the manufactories 
 and workshops of the present day. Geometrical surveying, rendered 
 necessary by the destruction of the landmarks in the annual inunda- 
 tions of the Nile, was early practiced by the Egyptians ; and the 
 science of astronomy appears to have been cultivated by the priests 
 as one of the mysteries of their religion. 
 
 31. The science of medicine received so much attention that, in 
 the practice of the art, the division of labor appears to have been 
 carried as far as in modern times. Herodotus says that 
 
 one physician was confined to the study and management SCIENCE OF 
 of one disease ; that some attended to diseases of the 
 eyes, some took care of the teeth, and others were conversant with all 
 diseases of the bowels, while many attended to the cure of maladies 
 which were less conspicuous. a 
 
 32. Division of labor could never have been carried to this extent 
 among any other than a refined and highly-civilized people. In the 
 
 a: Herodotus, ii. 84.
 
 640 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOfiY. [PART III 
 
 infancy of society every man employs himself in all the departments 
 of industry which are requisite for the supply of his immediate wants. 
 As society advances, the various arts and professions arise ; with the 
 progress of refinement these undergo various subdivisions ; but it is 
 only in the most advanced stages of civilization that the division is 
 carried to its ultimate limits. A very long period must have elapsed, 
 after medicine had become a separate profession, before a demand 
 arose for that diversity of practitioners in its several departments 
 which we find among the early Egyptians. 
 
 33. It is evident, not only that the ancient Egyptians possessed a 
 system of writing, far superior to the picture writing of the Mexicans 
 
 and Peruvians of America, but, also, that they had books, 
 ATxTi^ENTs an( ^ c ll ec ti ns of them in libraries. Over the moulder- 
 ing doorway of a Theban temple, supposed to have been 
 erected during the reign of Rhamses the Great, or Sesostris, about 
 the time of Moses, was found the inscription, " the remedy for the 
 soul." Two sculptured deities guarded the entrance to the supposed 
 Library, over one of which was inscribed the words " Lady of Let- 
 ters" and over the other the words " President of the Library." 
 Another inscription, among the Theban ruins, over the head of one 
 of these deities, the Hermes or Mercury of the Egyptians, began, 
 " Discourse of the Lord of the divine writings." Several works, 
 once attributed to Grecian writers, have been authenticated as of 
 Egyptian origin, but thousands of others are known to have perished 
 by the ravages of time. 
 
 34. An important institution of the Egyptians, and one that ex- 
 erted a great influence on the national character, was the division of 
 
 the people into various castes or tribes, the members of 
 DIVISION ^hjg}^ by the laws of hereditary descent, were obliged to 
 
 follow the trades and professions of their fathers. To 
 this system may be attributed the remarkably uniform and permanent 
 character of the nation the adherence to ancient usages and the 
 unvarying servility of the lower orders of the people, who had neither 
 the ambition nor the means of improving their condition. The two 
 higher classes were the priests and the military : the remainder of 
 the community was divided among the various trades and professions, 
 and the cultivators of the soil ; and even the latter had many subdi- 
 visions. 
 
 35. In the early periods of Egyptian history it is probable that 
 the political influence of the priesthood was very great; but the
 
 CHAP. IIT] EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 641 
 
 Egyptian hierarchy had evidently lost much of its power and splendor 
 at the time when the accounts of the Greek historians were written. 
 Although the great religious temples of the Egyptians were found 
 only in the several large cities of the kingdom, yet the sacerdotal 
 order appears to have spread over the whole of Egypt, and extensive 
 domains were set apart for its support. But the priests were not de- 
 voted, exclusively, to the services of religion : on the contrary, they 
 formed the aristocracy of letters : they were astronomers, architects, 
 judges, and physicians ; and had charge of every department of 
 science and learning. 1 
 
 36. Various opinions of the real characters of the religion of the 
 Egyptians have been entertained. There are not wanting evidences 
 of their belief in one Supreme Being ; but whatever may RELIGION 
 have been the views of the more intelligent of the priests, OF THE 
 the great mass of the people appear sunk in the most de- * 
 grading species of idolatry. Animal worship, supported and enforced 
 by law, was the religion of the State ; and pompous processions were 
 made, and munificent temples erected, in adoration of the meanest 
 reptiles. Herodotus asserts that all the beasts of Egypt, both the 
 wild and the domestic, were regarded as sacred. 
 
 37. Clemens, one of the early Christians, and bishop of Rome, 
 speaking of the religious temples of the Egyptians, says : " The walls 
 shine with gold and silver, and with amber, and sparkle with the 
 various gems of India and Ethiopia ; and the recesses are concealed 
 by splendid curtains. But if you enter the penetralia, and inquire 
 for -the image of the god for whose sake the fane was built, one of the 
 attendants on the temple approaches with a solemn and mysterious 
 aspect, and, putting aside the veil, suffers you to peep in and take a 
 glimpse of the divinity. There you behold a snake, a crocodile, or a 
 cat, or some other beast, a fitter inhabitant of a cavern or bog than 
 a temple. 
 
 38. Each district in Egypt worshipped some particular animal ; but 
 some species were held in great reverence by the whole nation. 
 These were the ox, the dog, and the cat, the hawk and the ibis, and 
 certain kinds of fish. The bull Apis was worshipped in a magnifi- 
 cent temple at Memphis ; and it was doubtless owing to the circum- 
 
 1. Heeren supposes that the priests were an original, civilized tribe, which, migrating from 
 beyond Meroe in Ethiopia, established inland colonies around the temples founded by them, 
 and gradually made the worship of their gods the dominant religion in Egypt. Heereii'* 
 Manual of Ancient Hist., p. 58. 
 
 41
 
 642 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 stance of the Israelites having acquired many of the religious notions 
 of the Egyptians, that a golden calf was erected by Aaron in the 
 wilderness, and by Jeroboam in Dan and Bethel. 
 
 39. In one district crocodiles were sacred ; and one of the species 
 was kept in a temple, where it was waited on by the priests, and 
 worshipped by the people as a god. At Thebes there were sacred 
 serpents, which, when dead, were buried in the temple of Ammon. 
 Herodotus says that " in whatever family a cat happened to die, 
 every individual cut off his eyebrows ; but on the death of a dog 
 they shaved their heads and every part of their bodies;" and 
 that " the x cats, when dead, were carried to sacred buildings, and 
 after being salted were buried in the city of Bubastis, which was 
 sacred to the Egyptian Diana. " a Confirmatory of this statement, im- 
 mense catacombs have been found in Egypt, filled with the mummies 
 of cats. 
 
 40. The Egyptians had oracles similar to those of Greece, and 
 Herodotus asserts that the latter were derived from the former, and 
 that in Egypt the art of divination had been in use from the remotest 
 antiquity. The names of nearly all the Greeian gods and goddesses 
 were derived from the Egyptian mythology. 
 
 41. Of the origin of animal worship among the Egyptians, and 
 the reasons that induced an intelligent and highly-civilized people to 
 pay divine honors to irrational brutes, Carious contradictory opinions 
 have been entertained. Some have supposed that gratitude for the 
 benefits conferred by animals first led to their worship ; others, that 
 the sacred animals were worshipped as types or emblems of the 
 heavenly constellations; others, that as the divinity resides in all 
 beings, the Egyptians worshipped him wherever found ; but others, 
 with more reason, trace the origin of animal worship to those re- 
 ligious or superstitious feelings common to man in the rudest state, 
 and which, among all savage tribes, seek for particular objects of 
 adoration. It is probable that, in Egypt, as among all the uncivil- 
 ized tribes of Central Africa, Fetichism, or the worship of idols, 
 early prevailed ; and when an intelligent class of priests was set 
 apart for the safe keeping of the objects of worship, and the per- 
 formance of religious rites, it would be natural that the religion of 
 the vulgar should become intimately connected with the sciences 
 cherished by the sacerdotal order. 
 
 42. Thus the animals that were worshipped as gods by the people, 
 
 a. Herodotus, ii. 66, 67.
 
 CHAP. II] ASSYRIAN CIVILIZATION. 643 
 
 were to the priests merely symbols of astronomical science, or em- 
 blems of the mysterious works of nature. It was thus that the figures 
 of some of them were used as the signs of the zodiac and the changes 
 of the seasons, that the goat was an emblem of the productive 
 powers of nature, the Apis, or ox, of the fertilizing properties of the 
 Nile, that the leaf of the palm, owing to the longevity of the palm- 
 tree, was a type of age, and that the onion, from its concentric 
 layers or pellicles, was viewed as an image of the universe. Thus, it 
 appears that, upon the degrading religion of the people, the Egyptian 
 priests engrafted the mysteries of the sciences, and established a 
 somewhat refined system of Pantheism, or general worship of the 
 powers of the universe. 
 
 VII. 
 
 43. Of the early history of the Assyrians, which is embraced 
 chiefly in that of the two great cities Nineveh and Babylon, our ma- 
 terials are more scanty than those which can be gathered MVrE1 JALS 
 to elucidate the history of Egypt. Such is the obscurity OF ASSYRIAN 
 that rests upon the chronology of those remote periods, HISTORY - 
 and so conflicting are the accounts, both of the names of the Assyrian 
 sovereigns, and the actions attributed to them, that the whole subject 
 is involved in the greatest uncertainty. Of the founding of the em- 
 pire or empires of Assyria and Babylon we have scripture testimony 
 in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth verses of the tenth chapter of Gen- 
 esis ; but even here the chronology is a matter of doubt, and trans- 
 lators are divided on the point whether Ashur or Nimrod built 
 Nineveh. 1 The Bible gives no farther account of the Assyrian em- 
 pire until the seventh and eighth centuries before Christ, when we 
 learn that about the year 800 Jonah was sent to preach against 
 Nmeveh, the capital of Assyria, and about the year 711 a king of 
 Babylon revolted from the Assyrians and wrote to Hezekiah, king 
 of Judah, congratulating him on his recovery from sickness. 
 
 44. Next to the Bible, the principal sources of information on the 
 subject of the ancient Assyrian empire are the writings of Herodotus 
 and Ctesias, Greek historians, the former of whom wrote in the fourth 
 century before Christ, and the latter in the early part of the third. 
 Herodotus travelled in Persia, and, in his accounts of the remains 
 of ancient cities, and the character and condition of the people, may 
 be relied on ; but in other respects he has been accused of dealing in 
 
 ]. See Note 1 , p. 18.
 
 644 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAET III 
 
 fable. The historian Ctesias, from whom nearly all subsequent an- 
 nalists and geographers have drawn their materials, resided seventeen 
 years at the Persian court, during which time he composed a history 
 of Assyria and Persia in twenty-three books ; but only fragments of 
 them have come down to us. Ctesias states that he had access to 
 the archives of the Persian empire, and he gives a long list of Baby- 
 lonian and Assyrian kings ; but he is discredited by many later 
 writers, and his chronology', certainly, is not so reconcilable with the 
 Bible, as is the system adopted by Herodotus. 
 
 45. Amidst the mass of conflicting statements and opinions, there- 
 fore, relating to ancient Assyria and Babylon, it is difficult to select 
 anything, apart from the Bible record, to which we can attach the 
 credit of authentic history ; and some writers have rejected, almost 
 entirely, all other than Biblical evidence, as fabulous and unsatisfac- 
 tory. Still it may not be proper to pass over entirely the statements, 
 conflicting though they be, of profane writers ; and we have therefore 
 given, in another part of this work, a brief account of the early 
 Assyrian and Babylonian empire or empires, gathered from the most 
 accredited histories. Both Nineveh and Babylon were Assyrian 
 cities, the latter being, apparently, in some sort of dependence on the 
 former, yet governed by kings or chiefs of its own, and having a 
 hereditary order of priests named Chaldeans, who were masters of all 
 the science and literature of the country. Respecting Nineveh, the 
 greatest of the Assyrian cities, we have no good information from 
 eye witnesses ; but the recent researches of Layard and others have 
 gathered from its ruins a valuable collection of Assyrian sculptures 
 and monuments which promise much information in respect to 
 Assyrian art. 
 
 46. From the time that Nimrod founded the Assyrian or Baby- 
 lonian empire, supposed to have been about two thousand five hun- 
 dred and sixty-six years before Christ, to the accession of Ninus, 
 some writers allow a period of about four hundred and forty years 
 to elapse, during which time they state that Babylon was ruled by 
 two successive dynasties of Chaldean and Arab kings, embracing 
 seven of the former and six of the latter, whose names are given by 
 Ctesias. At the close of this period of four hundred and forty years, 
 Ninus, an Assyrian prince, is supposed to have conquered Babylon, 
 after which the two empires remained united, under the successors 
 of Ninus, until the reign of Sardanapalus, when occurred the revolt 
 of the Medes and Babylonians, which terminated in a final separation
 
 CHAP, II.] ASSYRIAN CIVILIZATION. 645 
 
 of the monarchy into the Babylonian and Assyro-Median States, 
 eight hundred and twenty-one years before the Christian era. 
 
 47. From Ctesias we have detailed accounts of the reigns of Ninus 
 and his queen and successor Semir' amis, but they wear more the 
 garb of romance than of genuine history. Both are said to have 
 been mighty conquerors whose armies numbered millions of men. It 
 is said that Semir' amis was the daughter of an Assyrian goddess, 
 that during her infancy she was nourished by a flock of pigeons, and 
 that, instead of dying the death of mortals, she was translated from 
 earth, in the form of a dove. Moreover, the events stated by Ctesias 
 to have occurred during the reign of Semir' amis have been attributed 
 by other writers to different reigns ; chronologers cannot agree, 
 within fifteen hundred years, as to the period of her existence ; and 
 some have considered such a personage entirely fabulous. On the 
 whole, the accounts derived from Ctesias seem entitled to little 
 credit ; and, without them, an impenetrable cloud of darkness hangs 
 over the history and chronology of the early empires of Assyria and 
 Babylon. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 48. Of the extent and character of early Assyrian civilization we 
 have materials for a more accurate estimate in the accounts of eye- 
 witnesses, although written during its decline, and in the 
 monuments exhumed from the earth in which they had 
 
 been buried for ages. From the valuable particulars 
 which Herodotus, speaking from his own observation, gives us of 
 Babylon, we may judge of its condition a century earlier, in the days 
 of its full splendor, when, traversed in the middle by the Euphrates, 
 and surrounded by walls three hundred feet in height, seventy-five 
 feet in thickness, and composing a square of which each side, con- 
 taining twenty-five gates of brass, was nearly fifteen miles in length, 
 it was the metropolis of a powerful empire, " the glory of king- 
 doms, and the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency." Its buildings, 
 three or four stories high, and its broad' and straight streets, such as 
 were unknown in Greece at that period, its temple of Belus, com- 
 posed of eight solid towers built one above the other, full of costly 
 decorations of gold and silver, and its royal palace, with its memor- 
 able terraces or hanging gardens, were well calculated to fill the 
 Greek writers with astonishment ; but we have no good reasons for 
 distrusting the general accuracy of their statements. There is nothing
 
 646 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 incredible in the accounts of the enormous bulk of the walls and 
 other structures of Babylon, when we consider the almost unbounded 
 fertility of the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, their dense popu- 
 lation, the convenience and abundance of building materials, and the 
 unlimited command of labor which the Assyrian kings are supposed 
 to have possessed. The pyramids of Egypt, and the great wall of 
 China, the latter twenty-five feet high and twelve hundred miles in 
 length, are analogous cases, furnishing results quite sufficient to make 
 vs mistrustful of our own means of appreciation. 
 
 49. Of Assyrian civilization we may say, in general terms, that it 
 was such as was inseparable from an agricultural, manufacturing, 
 and commercial people dwelling mostly in cities, and cultivating the 
 arts of peaceful life. Calculate the wants, natural and factitious, and 
 the divisions of labor requisite to supply them, in such a state of 
 society, and whole chapters of details will be readily suggested. Of 
 the advance made by the Assyrians in the higher departments of 
 science, with the exception of Astronomy, we know little. In sculp- 
 ture we have evidence, in recently-obtained relics, of prevailing ideas 
 of the vast, powerful, mystical, and obscure, in religion ; but far in- 
 ferior to the beautiful and sublime, but later conceptions, of Grecian 
 genius ; while in finish and execution the infancy of the art among 
 the Assyrians is plainly discernible. Of their knowledge of painting, 
 geometry, and mechanics, and of their religious and philosophical 
 opinions, we know, comparatively, nothing. Of their progress in the 
 chemical art our knowledge is confined mostly to the rich dyes of 
 their cotton and woollen fabrics, which were celebrated throughout 
 all the Eastern regions. At a very early period, some say more 
 than two thousand years before the Christian era, the Chaldeans 
 made and recorded astronomical observations ; but none of definite 
 date can be traced higher than the middle of the eighth century 
 B. C. By long-continued observations they deduced the mean daily 
 motions of the moon with a degree of accuracy which differs only by 
 four seconds from modern lunar tables ; and Herodotus affirms that, 
 " as to the pole of the earth, the gnomon, a and the division of the 
 day into twelve parts, the Greeks received them from the Baby- 
 lonians." 
 
 50. Both Assyrian and Egyptian civilization exhibit, on a vast 
 scale, the acquisition of habits of regular industry, long before they 
 
 a. Probably either the sun dial, or a style erected perpendicularly to the horizon in order tc 
 find the altitude of the sun.
 
 CHAP. II.] ASSYRIAN CIVILIZATION. 647 
 
 had acquired any footing in Europe ; but these habits, so foreign to 
 the natural temper of man, were purchased in the one case by pros- 
 trate obedience to despotic rule, and in the other by the no less odi- 
 ous tyranny of a consecrated institution of caste. Every man's mode 
 of life, his creed, his duties, his place in society, were fixed, in the 
 one case by political and in the other by religious tyranny. The 
 natural tendencies of such a system were towards a gross kind of civ- 
 ilization in mass, capable of the most stupendous results of mere 
 physical labor, but at the same time opposed to great national ad- 
 vancement, to the acquisition of any high mental qualities, and the 
 developments of individual genius. The individual man was degraded 
 lost in the masses, of whom he formed only a minute fraction his 
 life of little worth, and its loss seldom or never felt by the communi- 
 ty. We shall find the strongly-marked democratic type of Grecian, 
 civilization contrasting favorably with this in its character and ten- 
 dencies : we shall see it stimulating to action the will and the reason, 
 and, by elevating the individual man, and giving free scope to indi- 
 vidual impulse and energy, furnishing, in the glorious consummations 
 of genius, themes of admiration to all succeeding ages. 
 
 IX. 
 
 51. From the brief view that we have taken of the early history of 
 mankind after the deluge, we are forced to the conclusion that Egypt 
 was the earliest, most intelligent, and most powerful of 
 
 il, i 1 1 ? x- -T J 4.1. 4. C 1, \. CONCLUSION. 
 
 the great kingdoms or antiquity, and that from her have 
 been handed down, through the Greeks and Komans, to modern 
 times, many of the arts of civilized life; but that Assyria and Babylon, 
 and perhaps Ethiopia also, attained a degree of splendor scarcely infe- 
 rior to Egypt, in the magnitude, wealth, and magnificence of their cities, 
 and the commercial industry of their people. Of those distant ages, 
 however, after all our researches, we can obtain only a very imper- 
 fect knowledge ; but from what little we do know we look back upon 
 them as upon a world of buried greatness, while the few memorials 
 that point to their untold treasures of opulence, and art, and power, 
 overwhelm us with unavailing regret that so much of the history of 
 our race is forever buried in oblivion.
 
 648 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAKT III 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CHARACTER AND EXTENT OF CIVILIZATION DURING THE 
 FABULOUS PERIOD OF GRECIAN HISTORY. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. GRECIAN MYTHOLOGY, the introduction to Grecian history. Its Philo- 
 sophical character. 2. Character of the LEGKNDS OF THE HEROIC AGE. 3. Uncertainty of 
 GRECIAN CHRNOLOGY prior to the first Olympiad. Character of the Laconian chronology. 4, 
 INTERPRETATION OF THE GRECIAN FABLES. 5. Semi-historical interpretation. The allegorical. 
 The latter generally to be preferred. Both inapplicable in certain cases. Examples of alle- 
 gorical interpretation. 6. Personification of natural powers and agents. 7. The Cecropian 
 fable. 8. The contest between Minerva and Neptune. 9. The fable of Cran' aus. 10. Of the 
 Egyptian Dan' aus and his daughters. 1 1. The legend of Hercules, allegorical explanation. 
 12. The Egyptian legend of Hercules. 13. Extent of the legend of Hercules. Views of Thirl- 
 wall, Clinton, and Grote. 14. Legend of the Argonautic expedition. Different interpretations. 
 15. The story of Helen and the Trojan war. Views of Thirlwall. 16. Views of Grote. 17. 
 Character, and value, of the Grecian legends. 
 
 18. RELIGION OF THE EARLY GREEKS. Great number and variety of the Grecian deities. 
 Foundation of this religion. 19. The gods of the Greeks, change from their symbolical 
 character. 20. The merely symbolical character of the gods of the Egyptians and Asiatics. 
 Causes of the hideous forms of some of their deities. 21. Why nothing of this kind existed 
 among the Greeks. Traces of the symbolical representation. 22. Personal character of the 
 gods. 23. BELIEF IN A FUTFRE STATE. The souls of the dead in Hades. The " Islands of the 
 Blessed." Punishment of the great offenders. 24. Influence of Grecian mythology upon 
 Grecian art. 
 
 25. Early GRECIAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT. Theclass of chiefs or nobles. 26. Powers of the 
 kings. Their pecuniary advantages. 27. Laws. Administration of justice. 23. GEOGRAPH- 
 ICAL KNOWLEDGE of the early Greeks. 29. ASTRONOMY AND COMMERCE. Naval expeditions. 
 30. DWELLINGS AND OCCUPATIONS OF THE PEOPLE. 31. Homer's representations. 32. MAN- 
 NERS. Courtesies and friendships. 33. Enmities. Conduct in war. 34. DOMESTIC RELA- 
 TIONS. Children and parents. Marriage. 35. Treatment of women. 
 
 36. THE ISRAELITES. No evidences, from the hieroglyphics, of their sojourn in Egypt. 
 Supposed reason. 37. Evidences from profane authors. The name Moses. 38. Confirmatory 
 evidence of the name and deeds of Moses. 39. Extract from Manetho. Accounts given by 
 Tacitus, Diodorus, and others. 40. The story of the supply of quails. 41. Conclusion arrived 
 at from these circumstances. 42. Social character, and condition, &c., of Hie Israelites. 43. 
 Evidences of an advanced state of society in the lifetime of Abraham and Isaac. 44. At the 
 period of the Exodus. 
 
 I. 
 
 1. The world of fable, far back in the shadowy past of Grecian 
 
 history, opens with a variety of strange legends of gods and goddesses, 
 
 who were anterior, as well as superior, to the race of 
 
 MYTHOLOGY mortals - Chaos, Earth, Ocean, and Heaven, Night, 
 
 Sleep, Dreams, and Time, personified, as well as Jupiter, 
 
 Apollo, Neptune, Vulcan, Juno, Venus, and Minerva, are represent-
 
 CHAP. III.] GRECIAN CIVILIZATION. 649 
 
 ed by the Grecian muse as marrying and intermarrying, and beget- 
 ting sons and daughters, some, of god-like natures, and others, min- 
 gling forms human and divine. Grecian mythology is the Grecian view 
 of the Philosophy of Nature ; and in the allegorical legends of the 
 gods, natural agents,' of gigantic powers, are represented as persons, 
 possessing the attributes of free-will and conscious agency, and in a 
 state of confusion and strife, until destroyed, imprisoned, or reduced 
 to obedience, by the overmastering power of Jupiter, who finally ac- 
 quires supremacy over gods and men. 
 
 2. Growing out of, and interwoven with, the Grecian theogony, 
 and still authenticated by the Greek muse alone, we next meet with 
 a class of heroic legends and genealogies, furnishing a LEGEND8 
 series of names and personal adventures, through which OF THE 
 the Greek looked back to his gods, and which he regard- H 
 
 ed as the primitive history of his race. In this primitive history, 
 extending down through a period of at least a thousand years subse- 
 quent to the supposed founding of Argos, it is impossible to dis- 
 tinguish names and events, real and historical, from fictitious creations; 
 and much that was deeply seated in the national faith and feelings 
 of the Greeks, and to which the moderns have assigned a positive 
 chronology, is found to rest on no firmer basis than the songs and 
 traditionary legends of bards and story-tellers. 
 
 3. The whole of Grecian chronology prior to the year 776 B. C., 
 the date of the first recorded Olympiad, 1 consists of calculations 
 founded upon the fabulous genealogies of kings, heroes, 
 
 and demi-gods, in the supposed line of descent from some CH RONOIA>GY 
 remote ancestor. Thus, Laconian chronology, which is 
 generally taken as the basis of the whole, is traced back through the 
 Spartan kings to Hercules about three generations being reckoned 
 to a century a computation altogether illusory, and as doubtful as 
 the reality of the legendary and poetical personages thus erected into 
 definite historical land-marks. a 
 
 II. 
 
 4. As the Grecian myths or fables, from the earliest assignable 
 
 1. An Olympiad was a period of four years the space of time which intervened between 
 any two celebrations of the Olympic Games. The Olympiads are reckoned from the year 776 
 B. C., in which year Coroebus was victor in the foot race, hence called the Olympiad of 
 Coroebus. The Olympic Games were celebrated before this period, but their origin is unknown. 
 
 a. See the " Application of Chronology to Grecian Legends" examined : Grote, ii. 34-57.
 
 650 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAKT IIL 
 
 period of Grecian history down to a period subsequent to the sup- 
 posed Trojan war, continually confound the human 
 
 IXTERPRETA- , ., v . j j , ,, , ,-1, 
 
 TION OF THE anc * ^ ne divine, and deal in the most incredible narra- 
 GRECIAN tions, they eventually fell into discredit, except among 
 the multitude, with the Greeks themselves ; and with the 
 philosophers they early became the subjects of a respectful and curious 
 analysis, which has continued to divide the opinions of the learned 
 to the present day. By some, the principle of semi-historical inter- 
 pretation has been assumed ; and by others the allegorical. 
 
 5. The semi-historical interpretation, leaving out of the fabulous 
 legend whatever is miraculous, highly colored, or extravagant, retains 
 only a series of credible incidents : of which all that can be asserted 
 is, that they may or may not be true they may be matters of fact, 
 or they may be plausible fiction. The allegorical interpretation rep- 
 resents the poetic legends as conveying to the early Greeks, religious, 
 physical, and historical knowledge, under the veil of symbols and alle- 
 gories. Doubtless both modes of interpretation are partially correct, 
 and will apply to particular cases ; but the semi-historical is never 
 to be adopted unless some collateral evidence can be brought to its 
 support. In the legendary accounts of the founding of the chief 
 Grecian cities, and even of the Argonautic expedition, and the siege 
 of Troy, it will be found, therefore, that we can place little or no 
 historical reliance, while, on the other hand, many of these fables 
 contain highly interesting and intrinsic evidence of their allegorical 
 character. There are others, doubtless, the special product of the 
 imagination and feelings mere fictions radically distinct both from 
 genuine history and philosophy, that cannot be broken down and de- 
 composed into the one, nor allegorized into the other. a A few ex- 
 amples of plausible allegorical interpretation, together with the reasons 
 for distrusting the semi-historical view of some of the more import- 
 ant and commonly-received heroic legends, will serve to characterize 
 more truly what are appropriately styled the fabulous and uncertain 
 periods of Grecian history. 
 
 6. The propensity of the Greeks to personify natural powers and 
 agents may be regarded both as the basis of their religion and their 
 legendary history. And when Earth, Ocean, and Heaven, personi- 
 fied, are placed at the beginning of celestial beings, it is not wonder- 
 ful that rivers, fountains, and other natural objects, viewed as ration- 
 al existences, should form the connecting link with humanity. Thus, 
 
 a. Grote, i. 450.
 
 CHAP. IE.] GRECIAN CIVILIZATION. 651 
 
 by a figure of speech, the tributary streams and fountains may be 
 spoken of as sons and daughters of Ocean ; and when the latter was 
 converted into a god, it required no great effort of the Greek imagi 
 nation to select from his numerous progeny here and there one, like 
 Inachus, of sufficient distinction to become the founder of a Greciaa 
 State. 
 
 7. The probable origin of the Cecropian fable exhibits the same 
 personifying propensity of the Grecian mind. According to an Attic 
 legend, the form of Cecrops was half human and half serpent, sup- 
 posed to denote his indigenous nature ; as the serpent was said to be 
 " a child of the earth." The name Cecrops has also been reduced to 
 the meaning indigenous, and also to a synonyme of the name of an 
 insect, the cicada, which the vulgar supposed to spring spontaneously 
 from the earth. Cecrops is therefore considered by some to be 
 nothing more than an emblem of the indigenous cicada itself, con- 
 verted by the poets into the first king of Athens. This supposition 
 is strengthened by the names of three of the daughters of the fabled 
 Cecrops, Herse, dew, Pandrosus, all-dewy, and Agraulos, a field 
 insect sacred to Apollo. 
 
 8. Moreover, in the contest between Minerva and Neptune, in 
 which Cecrops was made umpire, has been recognized an account 
 of the rivalry that subsisted between two classes of the people of 
 Attica, the one maritime and commercial, and the other pastoral 
 and agricultural, whose occupations were typified, the former by the 
 emblem of the trident, the sceptre of the god of the seas, and the 
 latter by that of the olive, the symbol of peace. The victory of 
 Minerva expresses a preponderance of the peaceful habits of pastoral 
 and agricultural life, and aptly denotes the condition of the Athenian 
 people down to the age of Themistocles. 
 
 9. Cran' aus, the successor of Cecrops, is said to have married 
 Pedias, and the issue of their wedlock was Atthis. Here is a coinci- 
 dence of Greek words, woven into an historical myth, which affords 
 a plausible explanation of the allegorical character of the legend. 
 Cran' aus , (xyavar] j^,) " the rocky country," is united with Pedias 
 (nediag) the " country of the plains ;" and the union of the inhabit- 
 ants of the hills with those of the plains forms Attica, or Atthis. 
 " And yet a hundred histories have repeated the name of Cran' aus 
 as a king of Attica !" a 
 
 10. The origin and name of the Egyptian Dan' aus, who with his 
 
 a. Anthon's Clas. Diet and Wordsworth's Greece. 

 
 652 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 fifty daughters is said to have fled to Greece, and to have founded a 
 colony in the vicinity of Argos, have been accounted for in the fol- 
 lowing not improbable manner. The eastern part of the plain of 
 Argos was dry and barren. The word dan' os signifies dry, whence 
 perhaps the derivation of the word Dan' ai, often applied to the 
 Greeks, meaning the people of the thirsty land of Argos. The per- 
 sonification of their name becomes a hero, Dan' aus. Again, 
 springs are daughters of the earth, as they are called by the Arabs ; 
 the nymphs of the springs are therefore daughters of Dan' aus, that 
 is, of the thirsty land ; and, as a confirmation, in some degree, of this 
 view of the legend, the names of four of the daughters of Dan' aus 
 were the names of springs. 
 
 11. One of the most important and widely disseminated of the 
 classic legends of antiquity is that of the hero-god Hercules. At 
 first view nothing can be more monstrous, more at variance with 
 every principle of chronology, and more replete with contradictions 
 than the barren legend of the adventures of such a mortal as poetry 
 represents Hercules to have been. But there is an interesting and 
 not improbable philosophical explanation of the fable. Hercules is 
 supposed to be no other than the sun, that gives light and life 
 to the world ; and his twelve labors are the passage of that luminary 
 through the twelve signs of the zodiac. Thus viewed, every part of 
 the legend teems with animation and beauty, and is marked by a 
 pleasing and perfect harmony. The god of day commences his annual 
 revolution with the passage into the constellation Leo, the Lion, in 
 the summer solstice ; and in the language of poetry, the hero-god 
 combats a fearful lion which ravages the Nemean plains. Hence, 
 too, the legend that the Nemean lion had fallen from the skies. In 
 the second month the sun enters the sign Virgo, when the constella- 
 tion of the Hydra sets, the second monster that opposes the hero ; 
 and the constellation in the heavens becomes a fearful animal on the 
 earth, to which the language of poetry assigns a hundred heads, with 
 the power of reproduction as they are crushed by the weapon of the 
 hero. In this manner the twelve labors of Hercules are explained 
 as an astronomical allegory. 
 
 12. Herodotus (ii. 42) relates the following Egyptian legend of 
 Hercules, which, like hundreds of others, would be wholly without 
 meaning, had we not a key to its interpretation. " The Egyptians 
 say that Jupiter Ammon was long averse to the solicitations of Her- 
 cules to see his person, but in consequence of his repeated importuni- 

 
 CHAP. III.] GRECIAN CIVILIZATION, 653 
 
 ties, the god, in compliance, used the following artifice. He cut off 
 the head of a rani, and covering himself with its skin, showed him- 
 self in that form to Hercules. From that time the Thebans esteemed 
 the ram as sacred, and, except on the annual festival of Jupiter, 
 never put one to death. On this solemnity they kill a ram, and 
 placing its skin on the image of the god, they introduce before it 
 a figure of Hercules." " Who," says Heeren, " understands this 
 story and this festival from the mere relation ? But when we learn 
 that the ram, opening the Egyptian year, is the symbol of the ap- 
 proaching spring, and that Hercules is the sun of that season in its 
 full power, the story, as well as the festival, is explained as descrip- 
 tive of the spring, and as a figurative representation of the season 
 that is beginning." 
 
 13. But we have not room to pursue this subject farther. Similar 
 illustrations might be given of many otherwise unmeaning legends 
 of the gods. Hercules was worshipped as the sun, under a variety 
 of names, from Ethiopia to Britain and Scythia, and from Gibraltar 
 (the pillars of Hercules) to the shores of Eastern India. Thirlwall 
 supposes that the astronomical part of the legend of Hercules, refer- 
 ring to his twelve labors, may have been borrowed from the Phoeni- 
 cians, and that other exploits attributed to him may have had some 
 foundation in the real achievements of several Grecian heroes. 
 Clinton, in his able work, the " Fasti Hellenici," ( Grecian Annals^) 
 considers there is satisfactory proof that Hercules was a real person ; 
 but Grote refutes this position with arguments which appear to us 
 unanswerable. 
 
 14. Of the Argonautic expedition long believed, even by the 
 moderns, to rest on a basis of accredited history, historical criticism 
 speaks in the same tone of distrust, as of the stories of Cecrops, 
 Cran' aus, Dan' aus, and Hercules. The early legends of the Argo- 
 nauts differed widely from each other ; and there are no means of 
 determining what the original story was. Not only are the various 
 editions of it full of the unreal and the marvellous, but the chronol- 
 ogy is various ; the geography of the places visited is a series of im- 
 possibilities ; and there is not a particle of evidence that this ancient 
 tale is anything more than a legend from the beginning. Yet it 
 formed a part of the national faith of the Greeks, which they would 
 never relinquish ; and when the advanced state of geographical 
 knowledge, and improved criticism, had dispelled many of its il- 
 lusions, the geographer Strabo hit upon a saving explanation, which
 
 654 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART HI. 
 
 the moderns have generally adopted. Making a compromise with 
 fiction, he supposed the golden fleece to be typical of the great wealth 
 of Kolchis, and the voyage of the Argonauts to have been a plunder- 
 ing expedition to that country. But this, as well as all other semi- 
 historical interpretations of the legend, is bare supposition, and 
 nothing more. It is more probable that the story has no particular 
 facts for its basis ; and the monumentary evidence of the voyage, scat- 
 tered over a vast region, from Italy to the Arabian Sea, and from 
 Egypt and Lybia to the German Ocean, go far to prove that the 
 legend is a general allegorical representation of the early beginnings 
 of Grecian commerce with the surrounding nations. 
 
 15. Concerning the story of Helen and the Trojan war, " the most 
 splendid gem in the Grecian legends," we shall give merely the re- 
 sults of the investigations of the ablest of modern historians. " We 
 conceive it necessary," says Thirlwall, <; to admit the reality of the 
 Trojan war as a general fact, but beyond this we scarcely venture to 
 proceed a single step. We find it impossible to adopt the poetical 
 story of Helen, partly on account of its inherent improbability, and 
 partly because we are convinced that Helen is a merely mythological 
 person. " a 
 
 16. "In the eyes of modern inquiry," says Grote, "the Trojan 
 war is essentially a legend, and nothing more. If we are asked 
 whether it be not a legend embodying portions of historical matter, 
 and raised upon a basis of truth whether there may not really have 
 occurred, at the foot of the hill of Ilium, a war purely human and 
 political, without gods, without heroes, without Helen, without Ama- 
 zons, without Ethiopians under the beautiful son of Eos, without the 
 wooden horse, without the characteristic and expressive features of 
 the old epic war if we are asked whether there was not really some 
 such historical Trojan war as this, our answer must be, that as the 
 possibility of it cannot be denied, so neither can the reality of it be 
 affirmed." 1 * 
 
 1 7. But it may be asked, are even the fabulous records of the 
 thousand years of Grecian history, down to the first Olympiad, from 
 which we have derived so many of our cherished ideas of classical 
 antiquity, to be now thrown aside as worthless legendary lore ? By 
 no means. The very circumstances which render the Grecian legends 
 unreliable as historical records, enhance their value as unconscious 
 expositors of real life ; for while they professedly describe the past, 
 
 a. Thirlwall, i. 80. b. Grote, i. 321.
 
 CHAP. III.] GRECIAN CIVILIZATION. 655 
 
 their entire drapery of circumstance, character, scenes, thought, and 
 feeling, is necessarily borrowed from the surrounding present. The 
 Grecian legends, the spontaneous, and the earliest growth, of the 
 Grecian mind, and accepted by* the Greeks as serious realities are 
 therefore to be viewed as exponents of early Grecian philosophy 
 of all that the early Greeks believed, and felt, and conjectured respect- 
 ing the character and attributes of the gods and heroes, and respect- 
 ing the social relations, duties, and motives of mankind ; and not 
 only are they to be regarded as brilliant creations of fancy, but they 
 are to be studied as instructive pictures of life and manners, and as 
 germs of thought and feeling, which have given to Grecian art and 
 literature many of their prominent characteristics. From the poems 
 of Homer, Hesiod, and others, who gathered the floating legends into 
 continuous epics, we obtain our principal knowledge of early Grecian 
 mythology and worship. 
 
 III. 
 
 18. It has been a disputed point whether the Pelasgians, from 
 whom the Hellenes derived much of their religion, worshipped only 
 one god, or paid adoration to numerous deities. The EELIGIO $ OF 
 latter supposition seems by far the most probable. A THE EARLY 
 spontaneous religious feeling, unconnected with any glim- GaEEKS - 
 merings of traditional revelation, would probably arise in the bosoms 
 of the rudest barbarians, however they might be situated ; but the 
 character of this natural religion would doubtless be varied or modi- 
 fied by the circumstances of climate, soil, scenery, and mode of life. 
 The early Greeks, like all rude uncultivated tribes, probably asso- 
 ciated their earliest religious emotions with the character of surround- 
 ing objects, and ascribed its appropriate deity to every manifestation 
 of power in the visible universe. Thus they had nymphs of the 
 forests, rivers, meadows, and fountains, and gods and goddesses almost 
 innumerable,* some terrestrial, others celestial, according to the 
 places over which they were supposed to preside, and rising in im- 
 portance in proportion to the powers they manifested. The founda- 
 tion of this religion, like all others, was a belief in higher existences, 
 which have an influence over the destinies of mortals. 
 
 19. The gods of 'the Greeks, unlike those of the Egyptians, and 
 the Eastern world, although at first exclusively of physical origin, 
 became, in process of time, something more than mere symbols of 
 
 * Hesiod computes the number to be not less than thirty thousand.
 
 656 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART HI. 
 
 natural objects and powers. The Grecian gods were invariably ex- 
 hibited under a human form ; and as the symbolical representations 
 of natural powers and objects were gradually dismissed or lost sight 
 of, the gods became possessed of the whole moral nature of man, 
 with its defects and excellences, but with infinitely higher powers an.d 
 attributes, and a form more ennobled and exalted, and generally more 
 beautiful. 
 
 20. But among the Egyptians and the Asiatics, when the human 
 form was attributed to the gods it was only secondary, employed for 
 the purpose of exhibiting the objects or powers symbolized more 
 clearly to the senses. Thus, keeping the primary design in view 
 the symbolizing of nature the Egyptian did not hesitate to worship 
 animals and various natural objects, and to unite, in the representa- 
 tions of his gods, the combined forms of beasts and men, often a 
 compound of all that was terrible and hideous. Thus the symbolical 
 figure of the Phyrgian Diana, identified with the goddess of nature, 
 denoted, by its multitude of breasts, the fruitfulness of nature ; and it 
 was for similar reasons that the Hindoo did not scruple to represent 
 his gods with twenty heads or a hundred arms. 
 
 2J. With the Greeks, however, nothing of this kind existed, be- 
 cause, so far back as we can trace their history, the Grecian gods had 
 already become morally accountable persons ; a although even in 
 Homer we can detect traces of the symbolical representation, where 
 Jupiter represents the ether, Juno the atmosphere, and Apollo the 
 sun. In the more perfect system of Grecian mythology, however, we 
 observe a consciousness, in the people who adopted it, of a general 
 dependence on superior moral beings ; and although Jupiter, the king 
 of all the gods, was, in a limited sense, the expressed personification 
 of certain powers of the natural world, and was called the lord of the 
 upper regions, " who dwelt on the summits of the highest mountains, 
 gathered the clouds about him, shook the air with his thunder, and 
 wielded the lightning as the instrument of his wrath, " b yet he was 
 often addressed in the simple abstract sense of an invisible, over- 
 ruling power ; and, confirmatory of this, the Greek name of the deity 
 signified, simply, god. 
 
 22. Although the gods are represented by the Greek poets as sub- 
 ject to the passions and frailties of human nature, and sometimes 
 stained with crimes of the blackest dye, yet as they seemed too great, 
 and too far removed from earthly affairs, to be tried by the rules of 
 
 a. Heeren'a Pol. of the Grecians, p. 56. b. Thirlwall, i. p. 93.
 
 CHAP. Ill] GRECIAN CIVILIZATION. 657 
 
 mortals, so they were not believed to approve, in men, of the vices in 
 which they themselves were accustomed to indulge. They were never 
 seriously considered as examples for imitation, but were, nevertheless, 
 supposed to punish gross violations of justice and humanity, and to 
 reward the brave and virtuous. The moral sentiments of the 
 Grecians, therefore, could never have arisen from a contemplation of 
 the supposed character of their gods, but the latter rather grew out 
 of the former ; and after the general principles of virtuous conduct 
 had become established, the gods were supposed to enforce them. 
 But although the favor of the gods was believed to be obtained by 
 a life of virtue, and their interposition in one's behalf by worship and 
 sacrifice, yet so subject were they to passion and frailty that the most 
 exalted piety could not always save a hero from the persecution of a 
 god whom he had innocently provoked. 
 
 23. The Greeks believed in a future state ; but during the heroic 
 age the idea of retribution appears not to have been associated with 
 it, except in the cases of those who had been guilty of 
 
 * BELIEF IX 
 
 direct blasphemy, or other gross impiety, against the A FUTURE 
 gods. The souls of the dead were supposed to descend STATE. 
 to the realms of Hades, where they remained, joyless phantoms, the 
 shadows of their former selves, destitute of mental vigor, and, like 
 the spectres of the North American Indians, pursuing, with dream- 
 like vacancy, the empty images of their past occupations and enjoy- 
 ments. So cheerless is the twilight of the nether world that the 
 ghost of Achilles informs Ulysses that it would rather live the meanest 
 hireling on earth, than be doomed to continue in the shades below. 
 Yet a few of the favored spirits, transported to some distant islands 
 of the Ocean that a"re cooled by refreshing breezes, and where spring 
 perpetual reigns, are permitted to enjoy a better destiny. On the 
 other hand, those great offenders, the deriders of the power of the 
 gods, plunged into an abyss deeper than Hades, are doomed to tor- 
 ments of unavailing toil and perpetual longings. a 
 
 a. See Virgil, JEneid vi. and Odyssey xi. ; in the former the descent of ^Eneas, and in the 
 latter of Ulysses, to the lower world. See, also, in Anthon's Classical Dictionary, the articles 
 Tantalus, Sisyphus, Tityus, Ixion, &c. Tantalus, placed in water up to his chin, was tormented 
 with unquenchable thirst, while the fruit suspended near him constantly eluded his grasp. 
 Sisyphus was engaged in rolling a huge stone up a hill ; a never-ending, still beginning toil ; 
 for, as soon as it reached the summit, it rolled down again into the plain. Tityus was placed 
 on his back, while a vulture constantly fed upon his liver and entrails, which grew again aa 
 fast as they were eaten. Ixion was fastened, with brazen bands, to an ever-revolving fiery 
 wheel. Only once do we read that these torments ceased, and that was when the musician 
 Orpheus, lyre in hand, descended to the lower world to reclaim his beloved Eurydice. In the 
 
 42
 
 G58 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 24. The moral character and consequent human form attributed 
 to the Grecian gods exerted an important influence on the whole 
 progress of Grecian civilization. Asiatic and Egyptian artists never 
 tasked themselves to produce ideal forms of beauty. The monstrous 
 figures often given their gods, in accordance with the symbolical rep- 
 resentations to which they were confined, furnished but a poor school 
 of statuary and painting ; and this is the prominent reason why, in 
 those Eastern nations, so little progress was ever made in the fine 
 arts. The Grecian artist, however, looking upon his gods as moral 
 beings, indued with human forms, was called to contemplate and give 
 expression to those divine attributes which distinguished them above 
 mortals. A boundless field was thus opened for poetic invention 
 also, which was early cultivated by the genius of a Homer. " The 
 sculptor Phidias," says Heeren, " found in Homer the idea of his 
 Olympian Jupiter; and the most sublime image in human shape, 
 which time has spared us, the Apollo of the Vatican, may be traced to 
 the same origin." Strike from the Grecian arts of painting, poetry, 
 and sculpture, that which they derived from Grecian mythology, and 
 but a few naked forms, without soul, or grace, or beauty, would 
 remain. 
 
 IV. 
 
 25. The form of government that prevailed among the early 
 Grecians, especially after the Pelasgic race had yielded to the more 
 
 GRECIAN warlike and adventurous Hellenes, was evidently that of 
 FORM OF the kingly order, on a democratic basis ; although it is 
 GOVERNMENT, Difficult to ascer t a in the precise extent of the royal pre- 
 rogatives. In all the Grecian States there appears to have been a 
 hereditary class of chiefs or nobles, distinguished from the common 
 freemen by titles of honor, superior wealth, dignity, valor, and noble 
 birth, which latter implied no less than a descent from the gods 
 themselves, to whom every princely house seems to have traced its 
 origin. 
 
 26. But the kings, although generally hereditary, were not always 
 so, a nor were they absolute monarch s ; they were rather the most 
 eminent of the nobility, the first among their equals having the 
 command in war, and the chief seat in the administration of justice ; 
 
 beautiful language of poetry, at the music of bis "golden shell" Tantalus forgot his thirst, the 
 wheel of Ixion stood still, and Tityus ceased his moaning. 
 
 a. " Esteem for the ruling fawilies secured to them the government ; but their power was 
 not strictly hereditary , n ~Heercn J s Politics of Jin dent Greece, p. 89.
 
 CHAP. III.] GRECIAN CIVILIZATION. 659 
 
 and their authority wis more or less extended in proportion to the 
 noble qualities they possessed, and, particularly, to their valor in 
 battle.* Unless distinguished by courage and strength, kings could 
 not even command in war ; and during peace they were bound to 
 consult the people in all important matters. Among their pecuniary 
 advantages were the profits of an extensive domain, which seems to 
 have been attached to the royal office, and not to have been the private 
 property of the individual. Thus Homer represents Telemachus as 
 in danger not only of losing his throne by the adverse choice of the 
 people, but, also, among the rights of the crown, the domains of 
 Ulysses his father, should he not be permitted to succeed him. b 
 
 27. During the heroic age the Greeks appear to have had no fixed 
 laws established by legislation. Public opinion and usage, based upon 
 principles of natural equity, and confirmed and expounded by judicial 
 decisions, were the only sources to which the weak and injured could 
 look for protection and redress. Private differences were most often 
 settled by private means ; but in quarrels which threatened to dis- 
 turb the peace of community, the public compelled the injured party 
 to accept, and the aggressor to pay, the compensation established by 
 custom. As among the savage tribes of America, and even among 
 our early Saxon ancestors, the murderer was often allowed to pay a 
 stipulated price, which stayed the spirit of revenge, and was received 
 as a full expiation of his guilt. The mutual dealings of the several 
 independent Grecian States with each other were regulated by no es- 
 tablished principles, and international law can hardly be said to have 
 existed at this early period. 
 
 28. During the heroic age the Greeks seem to have had but little 
 knowledge of geography, beyond the confines of Greece and its islands, 
 and the coasts of the ^Egean Sea. The habitable world 
 
 GE.OGRAPH* 
 
 was supposed to be surrounded by an ocean-like river, ICAL 
 beyond which were realms of darkness, dreams, and death. KNOWLEDGE - 
 Within the hollow earth, however, was the more proper abode of de- 
 parted spirits; and still lower down, as far below earth as heaven 
 was above it, was the pit of Tartarus, secured by its iron gates and 
 brazen floor, filled with eternal gloom and darkness, and its still air 
 unmoved by any wind. This was the prison house of the gods, or 
 of those mortals, of more than mortal power, who were the implaca- 
 ble enemies of Jupiter. 
 
 a. Hceren's Manual Ancient History, p. 126. 
 
 b. See the Odyssey, (Cowper's Trans.) xi. 207-223.
 
 660 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 29. The astronomy of the Greeks appears to have been much more 
 limited than that of the Egyptians at the same period, and little ap- 
 
 ASTRONOMY pli ca ti on f ^ was made to navigation. Legitimate com- 
 AND merce appears to have been deemed of no great import- 
 
 COMMERCE. ance during t h e heroic age. The largest ships of the 
 early Greeks were slender, half decked row-boats, capable of carrying, 
 at most, only about a hundred men, and having a movable mast, 
 which was hoisted only to take advantage of a favorable wind. Most 
 of the naval expeditions at this early period appear to have been 
 fitted out for purposes of plunder ; and piracy was not deemed dis- 
 honorable. When Mentor and Telemachus came to the court of 
 Nestor, that prince, after entertaining them kindly, asked them, 
 as a matter of curiosity, whether they were travellers or robbers ! 
 
 30. The Greeks, unlike most of the Asiatic nations, never dwelt in 
 tents, and were never a wandering people. During the heroic age 
 
 Greece was a populous and well-cultivated country, with 
 
 DWELLINGS, T , ... 1 i i n 
 
 AND OCCUPA- numerous and large cities, in part surrounded with walls, 
 TIONS;OF an( j having gates and regular streets; but no traces 
 
 THE PEOPLE. , ., , ,. 
 
 oi pavements appear. Homer describes the diflerent 
 branches of agriculture, and the various labors of farming, the cul- 
 ture of the grape, and the duties of the herdsmen. The weaving of 
 woollen and of linen fabrics, and perhaps of cotton also, was the chief 
 occupation of the women, and, as in Egypt, among the Israelites, was 
 carried to a high degree of perfection. 
 
 31. Homer's account of the luxury and splendor of the great, 
 however, the dwellings, clothing, .and furniture of the opulent, and 
 the armor of his heroes, must not be regarded as pictures which 
 represent the true state of Grecian art at this period. The poet may 
 have drawn largely upon imagination for his descriptions, and be- 
 sides, many of the manufactures from the precious metals were evi- 
 dently of foreign origin. Still, many ancient remains of Grecian art 
 attest the general fidelity of the poet's representations of the magnifi- 
 cence which the noble and affluent loved to display. 
 
 32. The manners of the early Grecians presented a mixture of op- 
 posing qualities, such as we might expect to find in a rude but chiv- 
 alrous age, and in an unsettled state of society. Every 
 
 MANNKRS. 111 * i 
 
 stranger was looked upon either as an enemy or a guest : 
 if a traveller could once enter a princely hall, and seat himself at 
 the hearth of the opulent, he was treated at least with respect, and 
 his person was deemed sacred. As a motive for observing the laws
 
 CHAP. Ill] GRECIAN CIVILIZATION. 661 
 
 of hospitality, Homer mentions that the gods, often in the similitude 
 of strangers, visit the abodes of men. a The many instances which 
 Homer relates of intimate and durable friendships contracted not 
 only between equals, but also between the princely and their inferiors, 
 present an amiable trait of Grecian character in this rude age. It 
 was not uncommon that an interchange of armor between two heroes 
 of opposing forces ratified a contract to shun each other's path thence- 
 forward in battle. b 
 
 33. But if the friendship of the Greek was warm, his enmity was 
 fierce : while the remembrance of an injury lasted, his resentment 
 knew no bounds, and in war he felt no pity and showed no mercy. 
 In battle, quarter seems never to have been given to a prostrate foe, 
 but with a view to ransom : c indignities were often offered the bodies 
 of the dead ; d and prisoners were sometimes sacrificed 6 to the shades 
 of those who had fallen, although perhaps this was not authorized by 
 the established maxims of warfare. But, worst of all, when a city waa 
 captured, all the males capable of bearing arms were put to death, 
 and the women and children were carried away into slavery. 
 
 34. In the domestic relations of life there was much in the conduct 
 of the Greeks that was meritorious. Children were 
 
 treated with affection, and great care was bestowed on 
 
 RELATIONS* 
 
 their education; and, on the other hand, the respect 
 which they showed their parents, even after the period of youth and 
 dependence, approached almost to veneration. As evidence of a rude 
 age, however, the father disposed of the maiden's hand with absolute 
 authority; and although we meet with many models of conjugal af- 
 fection, as in the noble characters of Androm' ache and Penel' ope, 
 yet the story of the seduced and returning Helen, and other similar 
 ones, suggest too plainly that the faithlessness of the wife was not re- 
 garded as an offence of great enormity. 
 
 35. The relation which the wife sustained in the family was not 
 as an equal of the husband. She was the housewife, and nothing 
 more ; her constant employment, weaving, or spinning, or superin- 
 tending the tasks of her maidens. Even Homer portrays none of 
 those elevated feelings of love which result from a higher regard for 
 
 . in similitude of strangers oft 
 
 The gods, who can with ease all shapes assume, 
 Rlpair to populous cities, where they mark 
 The outrageous and the righteous deeds of men." 
 
 Odyssey, xvih 577. 
 
 b. As Glaucus and Diomede. See Iliad, iv. 267, (Cowper's Traus.) 
 
 c. Iliad, xx 55G : xxi. 134, &c. d. Iliad, xxii. 429-451. e. Jliad, xxiii. 217.
 
 662 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III 
 
 the female sex. " That love," says Heeren, " and that regard, are 
 traits peculiar to the Germanic nations ; a result of the spirit of 
 gallantry, which was a leading feature in the character of chivalry, 
 but which we vainly look for in Greece. Yet here the Greek stands 
 between the East and the West. Although he was never wont to 
 revere the female sex as beings of a higher order, he did not, like the 
 Asiatic, imprison them by troops in a Harem. " a 
 
 V. 
 
 36. As cotemporary with the supposed beginnings of Grecian 
 
 history, we may appropriately advert, in this connection, 
 ISRAEL ITES * *^ e s j urn f tue Israelites in Egypt, their exodus from 
 
 bondage, and the character of their early civilization. 1 * 
 As the early history of the Israelites is connected with that of 
 Egypt, we naturally look to Egyptian annals for some confirmation 
 of the Mosaic record; but here we are doomed to disappointment; 
 and from the circumstance that the hieroglyphic sculptures on the 
 monuments of Egypt make no mention of the sojourn of the Israel- 
 ites in that country, some have thought, either that the historical 
 importance of the monuments themselves must be discredited, or, if 
 they are to be deemed reliable testimony, that an argument would 
 be based on their silence in this particular, against the verity of the 
 Hebrew record of the Egyptian bondage, and the exodus of the 
 Jews. But this silence is not at all remarkable, and is easily ex- 
 plained, in perfect consistency with Egyptian and Jewish history. In 
 the first place, the monuments belong almost exclusively to Upper 
 Egypt ; and it is not certain that a separate dynasty of Egyptian 
 kings did not rule, at this period, over the Lower country, in which 
 the Israelites resided. In the second place, it would be an unheard 
 of thing that a nation should erect monuments to commemorate its 
 losses and calamities such as befel the Egyptians in their dealings 
 with the people of Israel. Those deeds alone, which are thought to 
 redound to the honor of a country, are hewn in stone. 
 
 37. But although we have no direct authentic evidences from pro- 
 fane history of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt, a circumstance 
 
 a. Heeren's Pol. of An. Greece, p. 95. b. See, also, pp. 17 and 39. 
 
 c. Heeren, (Man. of An. Hist, p. 61,) and some other writers, suppose that the shepherd 
 kings ruled over Lower Egypt at the time of the Exodus of the Jews. When the two princi- 
 pal divisions of Egypt *rere not under the same government Thebes was the capital of Upper 
 Egypt, and Memphis of Lower Egypt. The Pharaoh who drove out the Israelites resided at 
 Memphis.
 
 CHAP. III.] JEWISH HISTORY. 663 
 
 that renders this but little surprising is that we have scarcely any 
 reliable details of Egyptian history itself during this early period. 
 Notwithstanding, in profane authors some accounts remain, wrecks 
 of more ancient records, in which it is believed some traces of the 
 real history of the exodus of the Israelites are still visible. The 
 name Moses, which signifies, in the Hebrew roots, saved a or anoint- 
 *ed, is evidently of Egyptian origin, and is recognized in many Egypt- 
 ian proper names, where it means begotten, or regenerated, as in the 
 aame of the king Thotmes or Thotmoses, begotten of the god Thoth. 
 
 38. Many writers on Jewish and Egyptian antiquities, who had 
 access to records now lost, confirm the name and the deeds of Moses. 
 Artapanus, in a work concerning the Jews, relates that a queen of 
 Egypt, having no children, adopted and " brought up a child of the 
 Jews, and named it Moyses." Chaeremon, a philosopher and his- 
 torian of Alexandria, who lived in the time of Nero, wrote a book on 
 the antiquities of Egypt, in which he states that when the Jews were 
 expelled from Egypt, their leaders " were two guides, called Moyses 
 and Josephus, the latter of whom was a sacred scribe." Among the 
 fragments of Manetho, preserved by Josephus, and which the latter 
 believes to refer to the Israelites, is one relating that an Egyptian 
 king, Amenophis, whose reign, according to the interpretation of the 
 Hieroglyphics, appears to have been cotemporary with the time of 
 Moses, collected all lepers and impure persons, and set them to work 
 in stone quarries on the eastern side of the Nile that a leader of 
 these people gave them ordinances chiefly characterized by their op- 
 position to Egyptian rites; and that they were ultimately driven 
 out of the land, and pursued through the desert to the borders of 
 Syria or Palestine. 
 
 39. The following is the closing paragraph of this extract from 
 Manetho. " It is said also that the priest who ordained their polity 
 and laws was by birth of Heliopolis, (or On,) and his name Osarsiph, 
 from Osiris, the god of Heliopolis ; but that when he went over to 
 these people his name was changed, and he was called Moyses." h 
 Another author, quoted by Josephus, makes much mention of the 
 leprosy of the people, and of a determined suppression of idolatry. 
 Tacitus repeats the same story, which he purports to have gathered 
 from numerous consenting authorities ; and he farther states that the 
 swine, being subject to maladies of the skin, is for that reason un- 
 
 a. See Exodus, ii. 10. 
 
 b Josephus against Apion, i. 20 c. Tacitus Hist., T. 3.
 
 664 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 touched by the Israelites. Diodorus has preserved a traditional 
 account from certain tribes of western Arabia, that, " on occasion 
 of a great ebb of the waters of the Red Sea, a certain part of it was 
 turned into land, the water removing to the opposite quarter, and 
 the dry ground at bottom appearing, but that a great flood coming 
 restored the bay to its former state." 
 
 40. Even the supply of quails, by which the children of Israel ' 
 were supported in the wilderness, is preserved in a broken tale of 
 Diodorus, who received it from the Egyptians, from whom alone he 
 had sought information. He relates that an Ethiopian king, who in 
 early times conquered and ruled over Egypt, sent all convicted crimi- 
 nals to the extremities of the desert, where they founded a city ; 
 " and that in this unfortuante situation, and with bitter water, they 
 invented a way of obtaining a livelihood. They cut reeds, split 
 them, and made lines which they set up along shore for many stadia, 
 and so they caught quails enough to live on, for these birds came in 
 great flocks from the sea." The inaccuracies of this and other stories 
 concerning the Israelites are not to be wondered at when we reflect 
 that sixteen hundred years had elapsed between the Exodus and 
 Diodorus. It should also be remarked that these facts are treated 
 as extraordinary, and out of the common course of nature as really 
 miraculous and this is why they were thought worth recording ; for 
 it will not be credible that the Egyptians should be at the pains to 
 chronicle, in their sacred annals, circumstances foreign to themselves, 
 and of no substantial meaning, power, or import. a 
 
 41. From these circumstances there appears little doubt that the 
 Egyptian historians, however much they might disfigure and conceal, 
 did notice the servitude and the escape of the Israelites ; and thus 
 sacred and profane history, springing from separate fountains, and 
 flowing in separate streams, unite in certain particulars to prove that 
 the miracles of the Exodus are real events. Moreover, in the 
 language of an able writer, " the Mosaic record, independent of its 
 religious sanction, has as high claim to the character of authenticity 
 and credibility as any ancient document ; and he who would reject 
 it would not merely expose his own sincerity as a believer in revealed 
 religion, but his judgment as a philosophical historian. " b 
 
 42. Of the social character and condition of the people of Israel, 
 and the arts and sciences known to them at this early period, the 
 Bible furnishes much satisfactory information ; while, from the cir- 
 
 a. Cockayne's Civil History of the Jews, p. 21. b. Quarterly Review, vol. 43, p. 141.
 
 CHAP. Ill] JEWISH HISTORY. 665 
 
 cumstance of the long sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt, we are 
 warranted in ascribing to them nearly the same degree of civiliza- 
 tion to which the people of that country had attained ; for " Moses," 
 we are informed, " was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians."* 
 
 43. Even in Abraham's lifetime we read of the purchase of a cave 
 for sepulture, and current money of the merchant paid for it ear- 
 rings, and bracelets of gold b jewels of silver and of gold, and precious 
 things a veil for the women d digging wells 6 and slavery/ In 
 Isaac's lifetime mention is made of sowing the land ;g and in Jacob's 
 history we read of mercantile exchange in spicery, balm, and myrrh h 
 sheep-shearing' a signet) musical instruments' 5 images 1 and 
 ships. m After the exodus the Israelites appear to have possessed a 
 greater knowledge of the arts, which they doubtless obtained in Egypt. 
 Among the offerings which they were commanded to bring for the 
 construction of the ark of the tabernacle 11 were articles of gold, and 
 silver, and brass oil for light spices for anointing oil, and for 
 sweet incense onyx stones, and stones to be set in the ephod and in 
 the breastplate. 
 
 44. The construction of the ark itself, with its mercy seat and 
 cherubim, its dishes and their covers, and the candlestick with its 
 shaft and branches, knops and flowers, all of pure gold ; together 
 with the blue, purple, and scarlet curtains, with the loops and taches 
 of gold to couple them together, the breastplate engraved with the 
 names of the twelve tribes, and the plate on the mitre of the high 
 priest, inscribed HOLINESS TO THE LORD,? all show an advanced 
 condition of society at the period of the exodus, and a connection 
 between the arts practiced by the Israelites, and those known, from 
 other sources, to have been in the possession of the Egyptians, thus 
 again exhibiting the agreeable evidence of sacred and profane history 
 confirming each other. 
 
 a. Acts, vii. 22. b. Gen. xxiv. 22. c. xxiv. 53. d. xxiv. 65. e. xxi. 30 ; xxvi. 15. f. xxi. 
 10 ; xxiv. 35. g. xxvi. 12. h. xxxvii. 25. i. xxxviii. 12. j. xxxviii. 18 ; Exoa., xxxix. 6, 14 
 k. Gen., xxxi. 27. 1. xxxi. 19. m. xlix. 13. n. Exod., xxxv. o. Exod., xxxix. 14.* p. xxxix. 
 30.
 
 666 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAET IIL 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CHARACTER AND EXTENT OF CIVILIZATION DURING THE 
 UNCERTAIN PERIOD OF GRECIAN HISTORY. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. CHANGES IN GRECIAN POLITICS after the. Trojan war. 2. The three cause* 
 assigned for them. 3. PolHical effects of the Trojan war. 4. Of the great migrations spoken 
 of. Effects upon the power of the Dorian princes. 5. Mutual influences of the colonies and 
 parent States. 6. The democratic lonians. Power, prosperity, and independence, of the 
 colonies. Tendencies to democracy. 7. Growth of free principles in the parent States. 
 Growth of freedom in colonies. 8. Gradual change in political principles. Political history 
 of Athens. Aristocracy and oligarchy. (Greek sense of the word tyranny ) 9. Gradations 
 from oligarchy or aristocracy to democracy. 10. Diversity in the modes of exercising political 
 rights. Checks against abuses of power by the people. 11. Accountability of magistrates. 
 12. Qualifications of electors. The strife between oligarchy and democracy. 13. Eligibility 
 to office. Gradual encroachments upon the restrictive laws. 14. Municipal character of the 
 Grecian constitutions. 15. Security of person and property. Effects of frequent political com- 
 motions. 16. Great range of Grecian politics. Practical knowledge to be derived from the 
 Grecian experiments in government. 
 
 17. Natural causes of union and disunion among the Greeks. NATIONAL COUNCILS. 18. 
 Origin, composition, and meetings, of the Amphictyonic council. 19. Its objects and tendencies. 
 Its peaceful character. Its chief functions. 20. Want of power to enforce its decrees. Causes 
 that often rendered its efforts at peace unavailing. Its decline. 
 
 21. PUBLIC FESTIVALS. The four principal ones. Open to all Greeks. 22. Origin, revival, 
 and superintendence, of the Olympic games. 23. Their immediate object. Their various ex- 
 ercises. Compared with the tournaments, and Roman and Spanish sports. 24. Rewards of the 
 victors. 25. National influences of the games. Appearance of Olympia at the season of the 
 festival. 26. Their influence over the physical education of the Grecians. 
 
 27. PERIOD OF GRECIAN COLONIZATION. Colonies in Asia Minor, the islands of the ^Egean, 
 Sicily, and Italy. 28. The Grecian Cyreuaica. Trade with Spain. The Phoenicians. 
 
 29. PROGRESS OF ARTS AND LITERATURE. Wealth and refinement of the lonians. Archi- 
 tecture and sculpture. 30. Early poetical compositions of the Greeks. Poetry and music 
 among the Dorians and lonians respectively. Songs at the banquets of the great. 31. The 
 first Grecian prose compositions. Lateness of historical compositions. Early dawn of Grecian 
 philosophy. 32. The Ionian school of philosophy. The theory of Thales. 33. Theories of 
 Anaxim' enes and Heraclitus. 34. Diog' enes the Cretan. Anaximan' der. Anaxag' oras. 
 35. Character and tendency of the theory of the latter. 36. Grecian philosophy intimately 
 connected with Grecian politics. Commencement of the contest between philosophy and the 
 popular religion. 37. The Eleatic and Pythagorean schools. Character of the former. 38. 
 History of Pythag' oras. Discoveries made by him. His astronomical doctrine. 39. Numbers, 
 the basis of his system. His views of the deity. Doctrine of metempsychosis. 40. General 
 character and influence of his system. The society established by him at Crotoua. 41. Its 
 forcible dissolution. Subsequent dissemination, and influence, of the doctrines of Pythag' oras. 
 
 42. THE ELEDSINIAN MYSTERIES. 43. Their character. Their wide range. Their tendency, 
 in relation to the popular character of the religion of the Greeks. 44. Our knowledge of these 
 rites. The nine days of their celebration. 45. The initiation of candidates ; admission into 
 the vestibule of the temple ; the cave of Spleen and Despair ; the august fane of the goddess. 
 46. Commencement, and character, of the revelations ; ghostly apparitions ; the infernal 
 regions. 17. The twelve Celestial duties. The lesser inhabitants of Olympus. Explanation of 
 the types of the festivities. Extract from the JEneid. 48. Effects of the revelations of the 
 hierophant. 49. Their oracular character. The powerful influence of the Eleusinian Mysteries. 
 The general estimation in which they were held. Socrates, Nero, and Valentinian. Sup- 
 pression of the Mysteries by Theodosius, A. D. 390.
 
 CHAP. IV.] GRECIAN POLITICS. 667 
 
 I. 
 
 1. During the first few centuries succeeding the period of the sup- 
 posed Trojan war, a gradual change is observable in the political 
 history of the Grecian States, the results of which were 
 
 an abandonment of much of the kingly authority which GRECIAN 
 prevailed during the heroic age, and the origin and gen- POLITICS - 
 eral prevalence, at first of aristocracies, or the rule of the few, and 
 finally of republican forms of government, which latter decided the 
 whole future character of the public life of the Grecians. The gen- 
 eral history of these changes, and of the causes which produced them, 
 and a delineation of the most prominent characteristics of the con- 
 stitutions of the Grecian States, are all that can be attempted on 
 the subject of the Grecian forms of government, and indeed nearly 
 all that is practicable in the history of political events that occurred 
 before Greece had an historian, and when tradition was the only 
 authority. 
 
 2. The three causes, more prominent than the rest, which are 
 assigned by most writers for the overthrow of the early system of 
 kingly authority in the Grecian States, and the final adoption of 
 democratic forms of government, are, first, the more enlarged views 
 occasioned by the supposed Trojan war, and the dissensions which 
 followed the return of those engaged in it ; second, the great con- 
 vulsions which attended the Thessalian, Boeotian, and Dorian migra- 
 tions ; and thirdly, the free principles which intercourse and trade 
 with the Grecian colonies naturally engendered. 
 
 3. The Trojan war, if we may credit the statements of the early 
 Grecian writers, cut off the principal members of many of the ruling 
 families in Greece ; and domestic dissensions, which arose during the 
 war, are said to have occasioned the expulsion, from their thrones, 
 of many others on their return ; while the authority of others still, 
 who survived the disasters, was inevitably weakened by the general 
 wreck of regal power around them, and the more enlarged views 
 which their subjects had acquired by a knowledge of foreign lands. 
 
 4. The great migrations of which we have spoken, by breaking up 
 the old foundations of society, contributed still more effectually to 
 the same end. The old dynasties were destroyed or dislodged, and 
 the cities and 'strongholds which formed the main supports of their 
 power were seized by strangers, and a tribe, till then the weakest, 
 became the most powerful of the Hellenes ; and although the Dori-
 
 668 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART HL 
 
 ans had generally been accustomed to kingly government, yet the 
 power of the princes was weakened by the change of circumstances 
 which arose from a migration to a new country, where they were con- 
 stantly reminded, by new dangers, of the obligations they owed to 
 their companions in arms, and obliged to guard, with additional 
 care, against any abuses of authority which might disturb the domes- 
 tic quiet. When dangers from abroad threaten, the principle of self- 
 preservation alone often prompts the greatest tyrants to strive to 
 regain, by concessions of privilege, the lost affections of their people. 
 
 5. But the mutual influences of the Grecian colonies and the parent 
 States, tended, more than any other single cause, to change the politi- 
 cal condition of the Grecians. Whether the migrations of the Greek 
 colonists were generally occasioned, as in the case of the Asiatic settle- 
 ments, by conquests, like those of the Thessalian, Boeotian, and 
 Dorian encroachments, which drove so many from their homes to 
 seek an asylum in foreign lands ; or whether they were generally un- 
 dertaken, as we know they were in some instances, with the approba- 
 tion and encouragement of the States from which they issued, with 
 the motive, on the part of the latter, to relieve themselves of a super- 
 fluous population, or of discontented and turbulent spirits ; there was 
 seldom any feeling of dependence on the one side, and little or no 
 claim of authority on the other. 
 
 6. Scarcely had the lonians established themselves on the coast 
 of Asia Minor, when they shook off the authority of the princes who 
 conducted them to their new settlements, and established a form of 
 government more democratic than any which then subsisted in 
 Greece. In process of time many of the colonies became more pow- 
 erful than their parent States ; and with the rapid progress of mer- 
 cantile industry and maritime discovery, on which their prosperity 
 greatly depended, a spirit of independence grew up among the com- 
 monalty, highly unfavorable to monarchical rule, or the permanence 
 of aristocratical ascendency ; and accordingly we find that, within a 
 few generations after the first settlements in the colonies, the mon- 
 archical forms of government had generally given way to aristocracies, 
 or the rule of the nobility, which latter, in turn, were ere long made 
 to yield to the more liberal institutions of democracy. 
 
 7. With the extension of commercial enterprise, these events ex- 
 erted an influence on the parent States, and encouraged the growth 
 of free principles there. " Freedom," says an eloquent author,* 
 
 a. Heeren, Politics of Ancient Greece, p. 103.
 
 CHAP. III.] GRECIAN POLITICS. 669 
 
 "ripens in colonies. Ancient usage cannot be preserved, cannot 
 altogether be renewed, as at home. The former bonds of attachment 
 to the soil, and ancient customs, are broken by the voyage ; the 
 spirit feels itself to be more free in the new country ; new strength 
 is required for the necessary exertions ; and those exertions are ani- 
 mated by success. Where every man lives by the labor of his hands, 
 equality arises, even if it did not exist before. Each day is fraught 
 with new experience ; the necessity of common defence is more felt 
 in lands where the new settlers find ancient inhabitants desirous of 
 being free from them. Need we wonder, then, if the authority of 
 the founders of the Grecian colonies, even where it had originally 
 existed, soon gave way to liberty ?" 
 
 8. But the change in political principles was gradual, and attend- 
 ed with similar domestic convulsions, and transfers of power from 
 one to the few, and finally to the many, both in the parent States 
 and in the colonies. As at Athens, monarchy, in most instances, was 
 gradually abolished by slow successive steps, first by taking away its 
 title, and substituting that of archon, or chief magistrate, a term less 
 offensive than that of tyrant, which was applied to an irresponsible 
 ruler ; next, making the office of chief ruler elective, first in one 
 family, then in more ; first for life, then for a term of years ; and, 
 finally, dividing its power among several of the nobility, thus form- 
 ing an aristocracy or oligarchy. Between these terms, however, the 
 Greeks made a distinction, using the former, as far as can now be 
 learned, to denote the form of government in which the ruling few, 
 whether governing by acknowledged hereditary right, or by election, 
 were distinguished from the. multitude by illustrious birth, hereditary 
 wealth, and personal merit ; whose rule commanded the respect of 
 the people, and was directed, ostensibly at least, to the promotion of 
 the public welfare ; whereas an oligarchy was a degenerate species 
 of aristocracy, the rule of a usurping faction, in which private 
 aims predominated, and which directed its measures chiefly to the 
 preservation of its power, to the exclusion from its body of all such 
 as would not primarily subserve its own selfish interests. In the 
 Greek sense, an oligarchy was to aristocracy, what a tyranny a was to 
 monarchy. 
 
 a. The moderns have attached to the word tyranny a meaning which did not enter into its 
 original definition. A tyranny, in the Greek sense of the word, was the irresponsible rule of 
 a single person, not founded on hereditary right, nor on a free election. It was power acquired 
 by violence, and it did not change its character or name when transmitted through several 
 generations. According to Greek notions, and the usage of Greek historians, a mild and
 
 670 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAST IIL 
 
 9. In looking at the many separate Grecian communities, we ob- 
 serve that the gradations from oligarchy or aristocracy to democracy 
 were numerous. In none of the States did either the oligarchy or 
 the democracy include the servile caste or Helots, while in but few 
 of them were foreigners ever admitted to the rights of citizenship ; 
 so that the form of government is to be determined by the circum- 
 stance, whether the sovereign power was exercised by a part or by 
 all of the freemen. When political rights had ceased to be the in- 
 heritance of certain families, democracy began its existence, even 
 though the great mass of the commonality was still excluded from 
 the exercise of political rights by their poverty, a barrier not deemed 
 insurmountable, as the poorest might aspire to the highest offices, by 
 obtaining the requisite qualifications. As political rights were 
 brought within the reach of a more numerous class, democracy was 
 extended, but, in the Greek sense of the term, it was not complete, 
 until every attribute of sovereignty might be conferred upon merit 
 alone, without respect to rank or property. 
 
 10. Among the Greeks, there was an almost infinite diversity in 
 the modes of exercising political rights. The modern representative 
 system was almost wholly unknown, except in the formation of con- 
 federacies ; and yet, in perhaps none of the States were the most im- 
 portant public matters discussed and decided in the general assembly 
 of the whole people. The consequences of such a legislation would 
 have been none other than the rule of the populace ; and the means 
 used to guard against the dangers to be apprehended from this source 
 were various. The most important business was often transacted in 
 smaller and more select divisions, before the commons came to vote 
 upon it ; the subjects to be brought before them were generally 
 limited by the constitution ; sometimes the decisions of the general 
 assembly were subject to the revision of a select body of elders, and 
 a reference back again for reconsideration ; but, more frequently, all 
 business which was to come before the commons was so far prepared 
 in some other and smaller deliberative assembly, that nothing re- 
 mained for the commons but to accept or reject the measures pro- 
 posed. Such were the various and necessary checks against abuses 
 of power by the people. 
 
 11. But besides the general assemblies of the people, and the 
 
 beneficent tyranny is an expression which involves no contradiction. See Thirlwall, i. 159. 
 "The Grecians connected with this word the idea of an illegitimate, but not necessarily of a 
 cruel government" Heeren. Pol. of Jin. Greece, p. 182.
 
 CHAP. IV.] GRECIAN POLITICS. 671 
 
 smaller advisory assemblies, or senates, which latter were differently 
 constituted in different States, there were magistrates for executing 
 the laws, aud transacting other important business. Under the aris- 
 tocracies or oligarchies, the higher magistrates, although often elect- 
 ive, frequently held their situations for life, and without any consti- 
 tutional accountability to the people; but, under the republican 
 systems, annual elections were generally held, and every magistrate 
 was required to render a strict account of his administration, at the 
 close of his office. He who did not thus recognize the sovereignty 
 of the people became what the Greeks called a tyrant. 
 
 12. The qualifications of electors of magistrates varied in differ- 
 ent States, as sometimes all classes, and, at others, particular ones 
 only, took part in the elections. The right of voting in the choice 
 of a magistrate was justly regarded as an important part of the free- 
 dom of a citizen ; and one of the chief characteristics of a perfect 
 democracy was the admission of all citizens to vote, as in Athens, 
 and in some other cities. Where the government verged from a 
 democracy towards an oligarchy, there it was the constant endeavor 
 of the few, by various restrictions, to exclude the great mass of the 
 people from any share in the elections. Where this attempt was 
 successful, a second step often followed, and the oligarchy was 
 rendered complete when the magistrates usurped the power of filling 
 vacant places in their board, and refused any accountability to the 
 people. Such usurpations were often, and, very naturally, followed 
 by revolutions. 
 
 13. At the first, in the republican States of Greece, individuals of 
 the lower orders were not eligible to the higher magistracies ; but 
 seldom could the principle long be maintained. Poverty was gen- 
 erally made the rule' of exclusion, on the ground that those who have 
 the most of worldly goods at stake, are the most deeply interested in 
 a just administration of government, and the support of existing 
 forms, and that they have the most to fear from revolutionary changes. 
 The graduation was also originally made on landed property ex- 
 clusively. But as the State became more flourishing and powerful, 
 and trade, and commerce, and the arts arose, those classed as the 
 lower orders began to emerge from their original obscurity, and con- 
 cessions were demanded and obtained for talent and worth ; and the 
 old distinctions being once broken in upon, it often became necessary to 
 abolish the restrictive laws. This change was sometimes more gradual, 
 nowever, than might at first be expected, because, as the offices were
 
 672 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III 
 
 not lucrative, but, on the contrary, were generally attended with con- 
 siderable expense, the poor were often obliged, of their own accord, 
 to keep aloof from them. 
 
 14. But still the reader would form an erroneous, and very im- 
 perfect idea of Grecian history, and of the nature and worth of the 
 Grecian governments, were he not reminded that the Grecian States, 
 with but few exceptions, were cities, with small contiguous districts, 
 and that their constitutions, being only forms of municipal or city 
 government, had few things in common with the large empires of 
 modern times. Often the districts into which Greece was geograph- 
 ically divided contained several independent cities ; although it is 
 true that the two most important of these divisions, Attica and La- 
 conia, formed the territories of their two leading cities only, Athens 
 and Sparta. In Boeotia, however, the cities of Thebes and Plataea 
 formed rival republics ; and the consequences of a want of union 
 among the chief Boeotian cities are known to history/ The territo- 
 ries of the Grecian cities often embraced only a few square miles, 
 and yet their prosperity seemed to depend but little on this circum- 
 stance, for Corinth, one of the smallest of the Grecian States, rose to 
 an eminent degree of opulence and power. 
 
 15. Whatever may have been the comparative worth of the Grecian 
 constitutions, we are forcibly reminded, that, amid all the glory and 
 renown for which Grecian history is so justly celebrated, security of 
 person and property, the primary object of government, was but im- 
 perfectly attained. The frequent political storms to which the 
 Grecian States were exposed, although affording to the master spirits 
 the noblest spheres of action, and exciting that constant mental ac- 
 tivity which leads to great achievements, left little room for that 
 tranquillity so necessary for the improvement of the domestic con- 
 dition of the people. Everything was done for the State ; and with 
 and through the State only the individual lived and acted. Political, 
 rather than domestic life, was the life of the Grecians. 
 
 16. There has been nothing, in modern times, comparable to the 
 great range which Grecian politics, in all their variety, embraced. 
 Of the hundreds of Grecian cities, scattered over a very small extent 
 of territory, and embracing kindred people, the constitutions of no 
 two were exactly alike, and there were none which, at some period, 
 had not changed their forms or principles. "What diversity of political 
 ideas must thus have been awakened ! But the Greeks needed the 
 art of printing to put them in circulation, and to produce the results
 
 CHAP. IV.] NATIONAL COUNCILS. 673 
 
 which a more general combination of them would have effected. Still, 
 the amount of practical knowledge which the Grecian experiments in 
 government elicited, has been of incalculable benefit to mankind ; 
 and Grecian history and Grecian politics will long continue to form 
 one of the must useful studies of modern statesmen and politicians. 
 
 II. 
 
 17. The natural causes which tended to unite the Greeks in :i 
 common brotherhood or confederacy, were a common language and ;i 
 common religion, while those which tended to keep them 
 
 COUNCILS. 
 
 asunder were the natural geographical divisions of their 
 
 country, and the nearly equal distributions of strength, 
 by which the principal tribes were enabled to preserve their mutual 
 independence. The necessity of some more special bond of union 
 than language and religion supplied, probably led, at an early period, 
 to the formation of friendly associations or national councils, for 
 remedying some of the many evils of disunion, and for the regulation 
 of mutual intercourse between kindred tribes. Such were the several 
 associations known by the name of Amphictyonies, and, more es- 
 pecially, the one, more famous than the rest, which, by way of dis- 
 tinction, was called the Amphictyonic council. 
 
 18. This is said to have been instituted by Amphic'tyon, a son of 
 Deucalion, king of Thessaly ; but probably this was a merely fictitious 
 person, invented to account for the origin of the institution attributed 
 to him. The council is said to have been composed, originally, of 
 deputies from twelve tribes or nations, a two from each tribe ; but as 
 independent States or cities grew up in the original divisions, each 
 of these also was entitled to two deputies; and'no State, however pow- 
 erful, not even Laconia nor Attica, was entitled to more. The Am- 
 phictyon' ic council met twice every year, in the spring at Delphi, 
 and in the autumn at Anthela,* a village at the distance of a few 
 miles from Thermop'yla3. 
 
 19. The original objects of the' council, so far as they can be 
 learned, were praiseworthy ; and although its ordinary functions were 
 chiefly connected with religion, yet it had a tendency to produce the 
 
 * Anthela was a small town at the south-eastern extremity of Thessaly, and near the mouth 
 of the river Asopus. (Map No. I.) 
 
 a. The twelve tribes seem to have been the Thessalians, Boeotians, Dorians, Ionian?, Perrhoe- 
 bians, Locrians, Alaeans, Phthiotiaus, or Achaeans of Phthia, Melians, Phocians, and Dolopiaos. 
 Arcadia, Elis, Achaia, yEtolia, and Acarnania, never belonged to the confederacy. 
 
 43
 
 674 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III 
 
 happiest political effects. Its stated and frequent meetings, being 
 attended by a large concourse of people from the different States, 
 continually reminded the Grecians of their common origin, of the 
 similarity of their language, religion, government and manners, and 
 of the earnest desire of the institutors of the council to join the dif- 
 ferent tribes in amity with one another. To impress friendly senti- 
 ments more strongly on the members of the council, every individual 
 was required to swear that he would never assist in utterly destroying 
 an Amphictyon' ic city, nor in turning aside the streams which sup- 
 plied it with water. Still the council had no right of interference 
 between members of the league in ordinary wars between them, nor 
 the power to act as a confederacy against foreign enemies. Its chief 
 functions were to guard the temple of Delphi and the interests of 
 religion, and to restrain, by advice and counsel, all undue violence 
 of hostility among Amphictyon' ic States. 
 
 20. Still the political objects of the council were scarcely ever at- 
 tained, for it had no power, in itself, to enforce its decrees, and it was 
 only in cases where the interests of religion, connected with the 
 Delphic sanctuary, were concerned, that it could safely reckon on 
 general cooperation from all the Greeks. Schemes of conquest and 
 ambition, or the jealousies of contending States, usually rendered 
 its efforts at peace unavailing, an additional illustration of the truth 
 that the wisest and most salutary institutions are often unable to 
 counteract the effects of the follies and vices of men. After the 
 Greeks had lost their independence, the council had scarcely any 
 other employment than the superintendence of the temple at Delphi, 
 and it probably ceased to exist when the Delphic oracle lost its in- 
 fluence, a considerable time before the reign of Constantine the Great. 
 
 4 
 
 III. 
 
 21. The public festivals of the Grecians had, in reality, more 
 claims to be considered national institutions, than the council which 
 
 we have just described. The Greeks exhibited a passion- 
 ate fondness for festivals and games, which were occa- 
 sionally celebrated in every State for the amusement of 
 the inhabitants. These, however, were far less interesting than the 
 four great public games, which were, the Pythian, at Delphos, sacred 
 to Apollo ; the Isthmian, at Corinth, to Neptune ; the Nemean, at 
 Nemea,* in Ar'golis, to Hercules; and the Olympic, at Olym'- 
 
 * JVemeo, noted in mythical history as having been the scene of the first labor of Hercules,
 
 CHAP. IV.] PUBLIC FESTIVALS, 675 
 
 pia,* in E' lis, to Jupiter. These games or festivals, though celebrated 
 within particular districts, were not peculiar to any tiibe, but were 
 open to all true Grecians who could prove their Hellenic origin. 
 The most important of these was the Olympic ; an account of which 
 involves many principles common to all the others. 
 
 22. The origin of the Olympic games is involved in obscurity ; and 
 although it appears that, during the heroic age, some Grecian chiefs 
 had celebrated their victories at Olym'pia, yet it was not till the 
 age of Lycurgus that the games were brought under certain rules, 
 and performed at stated times. At that period a prince of E' lis, in 
 concert with the Spartan lawgiver, and with the sanction of the 
 Delphic oracle, caused the games to be revived in honor of Jupiter, 
 and to be celebrated every fifth year at Olym'pia, ordaining a peri- 
 odical suspension of hostilities during their continuance, to enable 
 every Greek to attend them without hinderance or danger. Their 
 superintendence was intrusted, principally, to the people of E'lis, 
 and the judges took an oath, in presence of a statue of Jupiter, that, 
 in adjudging the prizes, they would be regulated solely by a regard 
 to justice. 
 
 23. The immediate object of the Olympic games was the exhibition 
 of various trials of strength and skill. At first the foot-race was the 
 only exercise admitted ; but in process of time the games were multi- 
 plied, so as to embrace almost every mode of displaying bodily activity, 
 including running, wrestling, boxing, leaping, pitching the discus or 
 quoit, throwing the javelin, and chariot-races. Women were forbid- 
 den, under pain of death, to be present at the games. In this par- 
 ticular alone the Grecian spectacles sustain an unfavorable compari- 
 son with the European tournaments of the middle ages ; but in their 
 general purity, innocence, and humanity, they were infinitely in ad- 
 vance of the barbarous and bloody sports of a Roman or Spanish 
 amphitheatre. 
 
 24. The rewards bestowed on the victors were almost exclusively 
 honorary. In the moment of victory the acclamations of the multi- 
 tude proclaimed the prowess or skill of the conquerors ; branches of 
 
 and famous for the games celebrated in the neighboring grove of Molorchus, was twelve miles 
 south-west from Corinth, and ten north-east from Argos. The site of the ancient town is still 
 marked by a few ruins, among which are fragments of a temple of Jupiter, and a few blocks 
 of stone, and broken Doric pillars. (Map No. I.) 
 
 * Olym' pia was not a city, but a collection of temples, altars, and other structures, on the 
 northern bank of the river Alpheus in Elis, and in the immediate vicinity of the spot where 
 the Olympic games were celebrated. Only a few vestiges of the numerous buildings, statue's, 
 temp les, altars, &c., which once marked the spot, are now to be seen. (M&p No. I.)
 
 676 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 palm were then put into their hands ; and at the conclusion of the 
 games they were summoned before the judges, who placed crowns of 
 olive on their heads. They were then separately conducted through 
 the assembly by a herald, who proclaimed their names, and those of 
 their parents, and their country. On the return of the victor to his 
 native country a part of the walls of the city in which he resided was 
 often thrown down to admit his entrance, and he was afterwards en- 
 titled to a distinguished place in all festivals and games, and was 
 thought to have conferred the highest honor on his country. 
 
 25. The Olympic and other games possessed little or no efficacy 
 as a bond of national union, because the opportunities which they 
 presented for confederate purposes were neglected ; and it appears 
 that the periodical interruption of hostilities, although in par- 
 ticular instances it might postpone the effusion of blood, did not at 
 all allay the animosity of warring tribes. The games did produce 
 a decided effect, however, in forming the national character. As 
 foreigners were excluded from them, they served to strengthen, in 
 the mind of the Grecian, the feelings which bound him to his country, 
 and thus kept alive his national pride ; but, on the other hand, they 
 ministered to the selfish passions of rival cities, each of which felt 
 its honor concerned in the success of its champion. At the season 
 of the games Olyrn' pia presented the appearance of an extensive 
 modern fair, being visited by a vast multitude from all parts of 
 Greece, who brought their productions of manual labor for exhibition 
 and exchange. Literary works were not unfrequently read there ; 
 and inventions in the arts, and discoveries in science, were there pro- 
 mulgated, so that these assemblies served some of the purposes of 
 the modern press in the communication of thought, and the more 
 equable diffusion of knowledge. 
 
 26. The games exerted an important influence over the physical 
 education of the Grecians, as victory in them could not be gained by 
 any occasional effort, but only after a long course of training and 
 discipline. Those who designed to engage in the contests knew that 
 success could be obtained only by those who were inured to hardship, 
 who had long been accustomed to practice athletic exercises, and who 
 habitually abstained from every pleasure which has a tendency to 
 debilitate the constitution, and lessen the power of exertion. This 
 kind of physical education, begun in infancy, was the most attended 
 to by the Spartans, but was common throughout all Grecian tribes, 
 It was one of the secrets of that eminence of the Greek's in war,
 
 CHAP IV.] GRECIAN COLONIZATION. 677 
 
 which no other nation ever surpassed. In those ancient times, be- 
 fore the use of fire-arms, battles were decided by the physical strength 
 and agility of the combatants, or, in other words, by their perfection 
 in the very exercises practiced in the Grecian games, and taught as 
 a part of the education of the people. The Greeks boasted that 
 each of their armies was equal to one of ten times the number of 
 barbarians ; and Herod' otus asserts that the individuals who con- 
 tributed the most to the victories obtained over the Persians, were 
 those who had the most frequently won the palm of victory at 
 Olyrn' pia. It was not uncommon to find the greatest literary at- 
 tainments combined with the greatest physical strength and prowess. 
 And if a portion of the physical training practiced by the Grecians 
 were introduced into our modern systems of education, health, vigor, 
 and energy, both of body and mind, would be increased, and the 
 physical character of the people greatly improved. 
 
 IV. 
 
 27. What is called the Uncertain Period 3 of Grecian history, is 
 important, as embracing the age of Grecian colonization, and of the 
 extension of the commerce of the Grecians to nearly all 
 
 . PERIOD OF 
 
 the coasts of the Mediterranean. Of the .ZEolian, Ionian, GRECIAN 
 and Dorian colonies, on the coast of Asia Minor, and in COLONI- 
 the islands of the JEgean Sea, we have already spoken. 
 The beautiful and fertile island of Rhodes, peopled by Grecians 
 during the century next after the Trojan war, became, in turn, the 
 founder of other Greek colonies on the coast of Asia Minor. In 
 the seventh century Sicily and Lower Italy were explored, and in 
 the former Messina, Syracuse, and Agrigen' turn, were founded by 
 Grecians ; and, half a century later, on the coasts of the latter arose 
 the rival cities Crotona and Syb' aris, of Achaean origin ; and on the 
 Gulf of Tarentum appeared the city of that name, founded, or re- 
 peopled, by Laconians. Such was the spread of Grecian cities along 
 the Italian coasts that Lower Italy received the name of Magna 
 Graecia. 
 
 28. In the latter part of the seventh century we find one of the 
 Grecian islands sending an expedition to the African coast ; and in 
 the now desolate Barca, notwithstanding the hostility of the Libyans, 
 who received aid from Egypt, the Greek dominion was firmly estab- 
 lished in the delightful Cyrene, the capital of the Grecian Cyrenaica. 
 
 a. See Chapter Hi., p. 43.
 
 078 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 The Greeks even passed the pillars of Hercules, and traded with 
 Tartes' sus, supposed by some to have been the Tarshish of Scripture, 
 a city of southern Spain at the mouth of the Baetis, now the Guadal- 
 quivei , with which the Phoenicians at the same time carried on an ad- 
 vantageous commerce. It appears to have been seldom, however, that 
 the Greeks came in contact with the Phoenician navigators ; at least, 
 there was no rivalry between them at this period ; and in all the ac- 
 counts that we have of the trade of the commercial cities of Corinth 
 and Athens, no mention is made of any intercourse with the Phoani- 
 cians. About the middle of the sixth century the knowledge and 
 commerce of the Egyptians were first opened to the Greeks by the 
 chance landing of a piratical band on the Egyptian coast. 
 
 V. 
 
 29. The progress of the arts and literature of the Grecians is in- 
 PEOGEESS OF ti ma tely connected with the rise of the Grecian colonies, 
 
 ARTS AND the widening commerce and intercourse of the Greeks 
 LITEBATUEE. with other nations, and the general advance of public 
 and private prosperity. In the Ionian confederacy of Asia Minor 
 the increase of wealth and refinement appears to have been far more 
 rapid than in the mother country. In the magnitude and splendor 
 of their 1 public buildings, and in the arts which adorned them, the 
 lonians proudly vied with Sicyon and Corinth, Argos, Athens, and 
 Lacedae' mon. The three famed orders of Grecian architecture- 
 the Doric, the Ionian, and the Corinthian arose during this period ; 
 and before the Persian wars had commenced, the branch of sculpture 
 termed statuary had attained nearly the summit of its perfection, 
 the beau-ideal of which, the final union of truth and beauty, was to 
 be realized hi the school of Phidias. 
 
 30. The earliest written compositions of the Grecians, of which 
 tradition or history has preserved any record, were poetical ; a cir- 
 cumstance which, noticed in other nations als"o, has led to the asser- 
 tion that poetry is, preeminently, the language of nature. Among 
 the Greeks, the legends and genealogies of their heroes and gods sup- 
 plied, at an early period, appropriate materials for poetical com- 
 position, in which the names of Homer and Hesiod first appear con- 
 spicuous. With the spread of commerce, the changes in government, 
 the increase of luxury, and new discoveries and inventions in tho 
 arts, tho occasions, subjects, and forms of poetry, were rapidly mul- 
 tiplied. Among the Dorians, poetry and music, which were general-
 
 CHAP. IV.] GRECIAN PHILOSOPHY. 679 
 
 ly combined, were made, by the law-givers, prominent instruments 
 of the religious, martial, and political education of the people ; while 
 in the Ionian and ^Eolian States they expressed more of the thoughts 
 and feelings of individuals, and were adapted to recreation and 
 amusement, rather than instruction. The aid of song was called in 
 to enliven and adorn the banquets of the great, public assemblies, the 
 Olympic and other games ; and scarcely a social or public gathering 
 could be mentioned that would not have appeared, to the ardent 
 Grecians, cold and spiritless without this accompaniment. 
 
 31. The first Grecian prose compositions, so far as we can now 
 learn, appeared in the early part of the sixth century, and were either 
 mythological, or collections of the local legends, whether sacred or 
 profane, of particular districts. The importance and the practical 
 uses of genuine history were neither known nor suspected until after 
 the Persian wars. Grecian philosophy, or a connected ' 
 investigation of causes and effects, had an earlier dawn, GI OIAN 
 and was coeval with the poetical compositions attributed 
 
 to Hesiod, although in the sixth century it first began to be sepa- 
 rated from poetry and religion, and to be cultivated by men who 
 were neither bards, priests, nor seers. This is the era when the 
 practical maxims and precepts of the seven Grecian sages began to 
 be collected by the chroniclers, and disseminated among the people. 
 
 32. Among these sages originated several of the early schools of 
 Grecian Philosophy, the eldest of which, called the Ionian, because 
 its most prominent teachers and disciples were natives of Ionia, was 
 founded by Thales of Miletus, about the middle of the sixth century 
 before Christ. The wealth which he inherited, together with his 
 discoveries in astronomy and geometry, raised him to distinction 
 among his countrymen, and prepared them to receive with favor his 
 philosophical speculations. In the investigation of natural causes 
 and effects, he taught, as a distinguishing tenet of his philosophy, that 
 water, or some other fluid, was the primary element of all things ; a 
 theory which probably arose from observations on the uses of moist- 
 ure in the nourishment of animal and vegetable life. 
 
 33. A similar process of reasoning led Anaxim' enes of Miletus, 
 half a century later, to substitute air in the place of the liquid ele- 
 ment of Thales ; as in respiration it is the supporter of life, that 
 which animates all beings, which encompasses, and appeared to him 
 to sustain, the earth, and all the heavenly bodies. By analogical 
 reasoning, also, Heraclitus of Ephesus, surnamed " the naturalist," was
 
 GSO PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 led to regard the supposed basis of fire, orjlame, as the fundamental 
 principle of all things, both spiritual and material. To the unseen 
 vital element of fire, (not its outward semblance,) he attributed 
 wisdom and intelligence ; and to its opposite extremes or tendencies, 
 whereby it is made to pass from want to gratification, and from grati- 
 fication to want, like the vibrations of a pendulum, he ascribed the 
 phenomena of life and death. 
 
 34. Diog' enes the Cretan, in carrying out the analogies of Anaxim'- 
 enes, was led to regard the universe as issuing from an intelligent 
 principle a rational as well as sensitive soul but without recogniz- 
 ing any distinction between matter and mind. Anaximan' der, who 
 first taught philosophy in a public school at Miletus, conceived the 
 primitive state of the universe to have been a vast chaos or infinity, 
 containing the elements from which the world was constructed by in- 
 herent or self-moving processes of separation and combination. This 
 hypothesis, however, appears to have been treated with neglect for a 
 century, when it was revived by Anaxag' oras, also an Ionian Greek, 
 who, combining it with the doctrines of Diog' enes, taught that there 
 exists one supreme mind, distinct from the chaos to which it im- 
 parted motion, form, and order. 
 
 35. The pantheistic systems of Thales and Heraclitus admitted, 
 in accordance with the fictions of the received mythology, that the 
 universe is full of gods ; whereas the doctrine of Anaxag' oras 
 would lead to the belief of but one god. Hence he was accused of 
 impiety, and driven into exile for denying the gods. Some previous 
 philosophers had taught that the heavenly bodies are globular col- 
 lections of fire and vapor, animated by portions of the divinity, 
 whereas Anaxag' oras regarded them as consisting of earthy particles, 
 like the materials of our own planet. He gave allegorical explana- 
 tions of the names of the Grecian gods, and struck a blow at the 
 popular religion by attributing to natural causes what, in sacrificial 
 rites, had hitherto been regarded as miraculous indications. 
 
 36. Such is a brief history of the principles of the Ionian school 
 of philosophy of the Grecian mind in its early progress of devel- 
 opment. The subject has an interesting connection with Grecian 
 politics also. As auguries, omens, and prodigies, exercised a great 
 influence on the public affairs of the Grecians, a philosophical expla- 
 nation of natural phenomena, which was one business of the Greek 
 philosophers, had a tendency to diminish the respect for the popular 
 religion in the eyes of the multitude, and to leave the minds of rulers
 
 CHAP. IV.] GRECIAN PHILOSOPHY. 681 
 
 and statesmen open to the Influences of reason, to the rejection of the 
 follies of superstition. The doctrines taught by Anaxag' oras were 
 the commencement of the contest between philosophy and' the popular 
 religion. The varying consequences of the struggle appear through- 
 out all subsequent Grecian history. 
 
 37. While philosophy was cultivated in Ionia, two widely different 
 schools arose, the Eleatic and the Pythagorean, in the western Greek 
 colonies of Lower Italy. Xenoph' anes, a native of Ionia, was the 
 founder of the former, and Pythag' oras of Samos,* of the latter. The 
 Eleatic philosophy began where the Ionian ended, with the admission 
 of a supreme intelligence, eternal and incorporeal, pervading all 
 things, bearing no resemblance to human nature, either in body or 
 mind, but of the same essence with the universe itself, and, like it, 
 spherical in form. Xenoph' anes openly rejected the popular super- 
 stitions about the gods, and paid much attention to the cultivation of 
 the natural sciences. 
 
 38. Pythag' oras, after visiting Phoenicia, and passing more than 
 twenty years among the priests of Egypt, is said by some to have 
 visited Persia and Babylon, where he made himself acquainted with 
 all the learning and philosophy of the East. Returning to Samos, 
 he next visited nearly all the Grecian States, and finally, passing 
 over into Italy, and settling at Crotona, established there his school 
 of philosophy, being the first Grecian who assumed the title of a 
 philosopher. Pythag' oras made some important discoveries in 
 geometry, music, and astronomy. The demonstration of the forty- 
 seventh proposition of Euclid is attributed to him. He also discov- 
 ered the chords in music, which led him to conceive that the planets, 
 striking upon the ether through which they move in their celestial 
 orbits, produce harmonious sounds, varying according to the differ- 
 ence of the magnitudes, velocities, and relative distances of the 
 planets, in a manner corresponding to the proportion of the notes in 
 a musical scale. Hence the "music of the spheres." From what 
 can be gathered of the astronomical doctrine of Pythag' oras it has 
 been inferred that he was possessed of the true idea of the solar sys- 
 
 Samos lies adjacent to the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, from which it is separated by a 
 narrow strait only two miles across. It is about thirty miles in length from east to west, and 
 about eight or nine in mean breadth. In antiquity it was celebrated for its extraordinary fer- 
 tility ; and the walls still exist which were built to form the sides of the mountains into ter- 
 races, for the purpose of facilitating their culture. It is still the most productive island of the 
 Archipelago, although its inhabitants have been reduced to a miserable state by the brutalizing 
 Bway of the Turks. (Maf No. III.)
 
 682 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAET III. 
 
 tern, which was revived by Coper' nicus, and fully established by 
 Newton. 
 
 39. Owing to the predilection of Pythag' oras for mathematical 
 investigations, he appears to have made numbers the basis of his 
 system of natural philosophy the representatives of the essence and 
 properties of all things and indeed the materials or elements in the 
 construction of the universe ; but whether in the term numbers he 
 included the idea of material particles or atoms, the basis of the 
 modern atomic theory, is doubtful. With respect to God, Pythag'- 
 oras appears to have taught that he is the universal, ever-existent 
 mind, the first principle of the universe, the source and cause of all 
 animal life and motion, in substance similar to light, in nature like 
 truth, incapable of pain, invisible, incorruptible, and only to be com- 
 prehended by the mind. His doctrine approached near to the mod- 
 ern system of pantheism the doctrine that the universe is god. 
 Pythag' oras taught the doctrine of metempsychosis, or the transmi- 
 gration of souls through different bodies, an idea which he probably 
 derived from the Egyptians ; and he professed to preserve a distinct 
 remembrance of several states of existence through which his soul 
 had passed. 
 
 40. On the whole, the system of Pythag' oras, with some excel- 
 lencies, contained many gross absurdities and superstitions, which 
 were dignified with the name of philosophy, and which exerted a per- 
 nrcious influence over the opinions of many succeeding ages. The 
 society which Pythag' oras established at Crotona was mostly of a 
 secret character, embracing not only a philosophical school, but also 
 a religious brotherhood, and a political association. A mystical kind 
 of religion was doubtless the main bond of union among his followers. 
 Their political opinions were in the main aristocratical, but, never- 
 theless, they professed to aim at establishing the dominion of wisdom 
 and virtue, under whatever form of government they might be found. 
 
 41. How far the society at Crotona was perverted to political 
 purposes, is unknown ; but its very secresy, leaving room for sus- 
 picions of sinister designs, was one of the causes of its forcible dis- 
 solution. Arraying itself on the side of aristocracy, during a pub- 
 lic commotion the house in which the Pythagoreans had assembled 
 was set on fire, and those who did not perish in the tumult only 
 found safety in exile. The unity of the society was at an end, but 
 the doctrines of the Pythagoreans survived, and being disseminated 
 throughout Greece by the exiles, and engrafted upon the Eleusinhn
 
 CHAP. IV.] ELEUSIXIAN MYSTERIES. 683 
 
 mysteries, they exerted an extensive influence in religion and phi- 
 losophy, and contributed to the education of many individuals who 
 afterwards became distinguished for their political eminence. Other 
 schools of philosophy scarcely less important than those we have al- 
 ludfid to, arose after the Persian wars, but the limits of the present 
 work forbid a detailed account of their principles. 
 
 VI. 
 
 42. In addition to the instruction, public and private, which the 
 philosophers gave in their various systems, and the public worship 
 offered to the gods by sacrifices and other religious cere- THE 
 monies, there were, among the Greeks, important na- ELEDSIXIAN 
 tional institutions of a secret character, which, open only J 
 
 to the initiated, combined the mysteries of both philosophy and re- 
 ligion. The most celebrated of these, the great festival of Eleusinia, 
 sacred to Ceres and Proserpine, was observed every fourth year in 
 different parts of Greece, but more particularly by the people of 
 Athens every fifth year at Eleusis in Attica. 
 
 43. The Mysteries, as the Eleusinian festival was often called by 
 way of eminence, avowedly based on the fabulous wanderings of the 
 goddess Ceres in search of her daughter Proserpine, were religious 
 and philosophical rites, doubtless originally intended to convey to 
 the initiated the hidden meaning of the one allegory of the fabled 
 goddess the mysteries of vegetation. Afterwards they took a wider 
 range, and embraced the whole system of Grecian mythology. They 
 did not, as some have supposed, throw discredit upon the popular 
 religious belief of the times ; for while the goddess of grain and 
 harvests was disrobed of her celestial character, and resolved into 
 the vivifying powers of heat, rain, air, and sunlight, acting upon the 
 seed sown in the earth, the atheistic tendency to a disbelief in the 
 gods was checked by deifying anew these natural agents, and, with 
 their mysterious attributes, reconstructing the " form divine" which 
 the Greek fancy pictured as a fitting representation of those sup- 
 posed spiritual powers at work in the vast laboratory of nature. If 
 the material theology was debased by the revelation of the mysteries, 
 the spiritual and philosophical was exalted. The gods, therefore, 
 which were the immediate objects of Grecian worship, were merely 
 the palpable images of impalpable spiritual realities the medium 
 through which the votaries of Eleusinia held communion with NATURE. 
 
 44. What is known of the sacred rites performed at Eleusis, has
 
 684 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III 
 
 been gathered from occasional incidental allusions found in the pages 
 of nearly all the classic authorities ; and although the penalty of a 
 sudden and ignominious death impended over any one who divulged 
 these symbolic ceremonies, yet sufficient is now known to describe them 
 with much minuteness of detail. They occupied nine days, from the 
 15th to the 23d of September inclusive, the first being the day on 
 which the worshippers merely collected together the second that on 
 which they purified themselves by bathing in the sea the third the day 
 of sacrifices the fourth the day of offerings to the goddess the fifth 
 the day of torches, when the multitude roamed over the meadows at 
 nightfall, carrying flambeaus in imitation of Ceres searching for her 
 daughter the sixth the day of Bacchus, the god of Vintage the 
 seventh the day of athletic pastimes the eighth the day devoted 
 to the lesser mysteries and celestial revelations and the ninth the 
 day of libations, closing with the discordant shouts of the worship- 
 pers. a 
 
 45. At Athens, applicants for initiation, having twelve months pre- 
 viously assisted at the lesser mysteries at Agrae, and having purified 
 themselves, and offered the requisite sacrifice to Ceres, were examined 
 by four curators appointed by the government, and presided over by 
 the chief of the nine archons. Crowned with myrtle, in the hours of 
 darkness the successful candidates were ushered, by a choir of maid- 
 ens robed in white and their brows cinctured with garlands, through 
 the holy grove, and admitted into the vestibule of the mystical temple, 
 a gigantic building dedicated to Eleusinia. As the worshipper passed 
 the threshold he found himself enveloped in darkness, while a voice 
 warned him not to advance unless his body were cleansed, and his 
 mind divested of all carnal affections. Proceeding a little farther a 
 dim light enabled him to distinguish, though with difficulty, the 
 character of the place : he was in the cave of Spleen and Despair 
 the cave dedicated to the darker and meaner passions of humanity. 
 As he groped his way onward through the dank cavern, the most 
 loathsome reptiles glided along the walls, spectral objects flitted 
 around him, and the air was rent with unearthly yells. Each ad- 
 venturer strove to conquer the dismay excited by these preternatural 
 sounds and distracting illusions, when suddenly the walls of the cav- 
 
 a. For the materials of our descriptive account of the rites of Eleusis we are greatly indebted 
 to a valuable article on the " Eleusinian Mysteries," in Blackwood's Magazine of February 
 i853, to which the reader is referred for a fuller account, and for authorities for " every inci- 
 dent even the smallest particular."
 
 CHAP. IV. j ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES. 685 
 
 
 
 era burst asunder, and he found himself in the august fane of the 
 goddess a vast and magnificent temple, whose lofty dome was 
 strewn with stars and constellations of burnished copper. Amid a 
 crowd of worshippers, and inferior officials, he recognized the high 
 functionaries of the festival the sacred torch-bearer, the herald, the 
 altar -priest, and hierophant, or revealer of mysteries all suitably 
 habited in dresses of mystic import, and the latter enveloped in a 
 costume as gorgeous as the coronation robes of an emperor. 
 
 46. The magnificence of the temple, lit up for a moment by the 
 flames of the sacrificial pile, was as suddenly lost to the view, for in- 
 stantaneously the light disappeared, and the whole was involved in 
 impenetrable obscurity. Then was heard the solemn voice of the 
 hierophant raised in Supplication to the gods; and the revelations 
 commenced. A roaring noise seemed to shake the building to its 
 foundations ; the marble pavement quaked, and many of the worship- 
 pers, in an extremity of dread, were thrown down by the heavy un- 
 dulations. Suddenly the din was hushed, and a lull profound as 
 death succeeded. After a momentary pause the hideous roaring was 
 renewed ; the thunder crashed above the heads of the multitude ; at 
 one instant gleams of lightning dazzled the eyes ; at another, every- 
 thing was buried in a gloom deeper than midnight. Amid yells and 
 bowlings like those of demons, ghostly apparitions startled the be- 
 holders : first a band of monster Centaurs ; then the fierce brothers 
 Briareus and Gyges, each with a hundred arms ; now the avenging 
 Eumen' ides ; now the Gorgons dire, and their guards, the hoary- 
 haired Graise; now three-headed Cer'berus; Chimera vomiting 
 flames, and Min' otaur trampling the earth in a rage of madness and 
 ferocity. Fearful as were these scenes, others more awful followed. 
 Far down in the depths of a yawning chasm, the dread secrets of the 
 infernal regions were unfolded. The sluggish waters of Phleg' ethon 
 were seen beating, with measured cadence, against the palace of the 
 god of Hades, the boatman Charon ferrying the dead across the 
 Stygian river, Rhadaman' thus seated on his throne of judgment, 
 grizzly phantoms flitting through the murky atmosphere, and, last- 
 ly, the assembled deities of hell, in whose midst frowned the relent- 
 less .and forbidding visage of Pluto. With this final revelation of 
 horrors the abyss was slowly shrouded from view, the thunder again 
 resounded through the heavens, and at the voice of the hierophant 
 the gloom of a tempestuous night was instantly succeeded by the 
 lustre of refulgent day.
 
 686 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAM III. 
 
 47. It was then that the chief mysteries of Ceres were revealed 
 to her votaries ; and in the midst of a divine radiance the twelve 
 Celestial deities passed before them ; Jupiter crowned with olive 
 boughs ; Apollo, with pencils of light ; Neptune, with anemones ; 
 Mars, with a golden helmet ; Mercury, with a winged cap and sandals ; 
 Vulcan, with dishevelled ringlets ; Juno, attended by her cuckoo 
 and peacocks ; Minerva, by her owl and dragon ; Diana, by her 
 greyhound ; Ceres, by a dolphin ; Venus, by a sparrow ; and Vesta, 
 bearing the palladium as her talisman. Next came a procession of 
 the lesser inhabitants of Olympus Oreads from the mountains ; 
 Naiads from the streams ; Bacchus, with his train of revellers ; winged 
 Cupid, with his bow and arrows ; and Aurora, blushing with the tints 
 of the morning ; together with the rest of the " infinite variety" of 
 the " Pagan host,'' in superb ajid bewildering confusion. A repre- 
 sentation of the story of Ceres and Proserpine closed the sacred fes- 
 tival of Eleusis, after which the hierophant ascended a rostrum in 
 front of the statue of the goddess, and opening the sacred volume 
 Petroma, read from the stone tablets an explanation of the types of 
 the festivities, in language probably not unlike that which Virgil 
 puts into the mouth of Auchises, in the sixth book of the jEneid, 
 and which may be regarded as a condensed definition of the secrets 
 of Eleusis and the creed of Pythagoras. The sixth book of the 
 .ZEneid is believed to represent, moreover, several of the scenes of the 
 mysteries. In the following language Anchises answers the inquiries 
 of his god- like son : 
 
 " Know first that heav'n, and earth's contracted frame, 
 And flowing waters, and the starry flame, 
 And both the radiant lights, one common soul 
 Inspires and feeds and animates the whole. 
 This active mind, infused through all the space, 
 Unites and mingles with the mighty mass. 
 Hence men and beasts the breath of life obtain, 
 And birds of air, and monsters of the main. 
 Th' ethereal vigor is in all the same ; 
 And ev'ry soul is fill'd with equal flame 
 As much as earthy limbs, and gross allay 
 Of mortal members subject to decay, 
 Blunt not the beams of heav'n and edge of day. 
 From this coarse mixture of terrestrial parts, 
 Desire and fear by turns possess their hearts, 
 And grief and joy : nor can the grovelling mind, 
 In the dark dungeon of the limbs confined, 
 Assert the native skies, or own its heav'nly kind: 
 / Nol death itself can wholly wash their stains ; 
 
 But long-contracted filth ev'n in the soul remains.
 
 CHAT [V.] ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES. 687 
 
 The relics of invet'rate vice they wear ; 
 And spots of sin obscene in ev'ry face appear 
 For this are various penances jsnjoin'd ; 
 And some are hung to bleach upon the wind, 
 Some plunged in waters, others purged in fires, 
 Till all the dregs are druin'd, and all the rust expires. 
 All have their manes, and their manes bear : 
 The few, so cleansed, to these abodes repair, 
 And breathe, in ample fields, the soft Elysian air. 
 Then are they happy, when by length of time 
 The scurf is worn away of each committed crime ; 
 No speck is left of their habitual stains ; 
 But the pure ether of the soul remains. 
 But, when a thousand rolling years are past, 
 (So long their punishments and penance last,) 
 'Whole droves of minds are, by the driving god, 
 Compell'd to drink the deep Lethean flood, 
 In large forgetful draughts to steep the cares 
 Of their past labors and their irksome years, 
 That, unremetnb'ring of its former pain, 
 The soul may suffer mortal flesh again."a 
 
 4h We can conceive of the effect which the revelations of the 
 hierojphant produced upon the mixed assemblage whose minds were 
 stimulated by the marvellous ordeal through which they had just 
 passed, as he resolved the mythological legends into the varied opera- 
 tions of Nature's laws, and explained the divine nature of the soul 
 or spirit, its union with the body in a probationary existence, its de- 
 generacy by association with material organs, its need of purification, 
 its immortality, and its final destiny. With what rapture they lis- 
 tened, as the mysteries became transparent under their scrutiny ; how 
 their bosoms glowed with enthusiam for the pursuits of philosophy, 
 and the cause of their religion ; how their minds must have expand- 
 ed with the acquisition of these " hidden treasures of wisdom and 
 happiness !" 
 
 49. But while the hierophant explained the glowing fables of 
 Grecian mythology as allegorical representations of the mysteries of 
 Nature, it is supposed that his words were sufficiently oracular to 
 admit of being interpreted by the worshipper in accordance with the 
 system of philosophy which he himself had embraced. Thus one 
 saw, in the sacred rites, confirmation of one creed, and others, of 
 another ; but all bowed in reverence before them, as enshrining the 
 august mysteries of religion and philosophy. Celebrated, under a 
 veil of secresy, with extraordinary pomp and solemnity, they exerted 
 a powerful influence over a people so susceptible as the ancient 
 
 a. Virgil's JEneid, vi. 724-751 : Dryden's Trans, vi. 980-1020.
 
 688 PHILOSOPHY 0* HISTORY 
 
 Greeks, who abandoned themselves, with the most ardent enthusLssta, 
 to the exquisite seductions of their polytheistic mythology. Of so 
 holy a character were the Eleusinian rites deemed, that, although the/ 
 were open to both sexes, and all classes among the citizens, all crimi- 
 nals, helots, and necromancers, were excluded from them, while the 
 initiated who abstained from their periodical observance were re- 
 garded as having incurred the displeasure of the gods, and as being 
 doomed, hereafter, to eternal darkness and abasement. The charge 
 against Socrates, of having neglected the holy ordeal of initiation, 
 was construed as evidence of irreverence and impiety towards the 
 gods ; and when the imperious and lawless Nero visited Greece, such 
 was the awe with which the sacred rites of Eleusis inspired him, that 
 he was deterred from joining in them, from a consciousness of his own 
 blood-stained character ; and such was the sway which, at a later 
 period, these festivities continued to exert over the people, that the 
 emperor Valentinian was forced to permit their continuance in Greece, 
 after he had prohibited elsewhere all nocturnal sacrifices. For sev- 
 enteen centuries and a-half, reckoning from their supposed introduc- 
 tion into Attica by Eumolpus, in 1356 B. C-, they maintianed their 
 influence and authority. It was in the time of Theodosius that the 
 Christian world rose up against them, and the fathers of the Church 
 declared that " every mode of polytheism conducts its deluded vota- 
 ries, through the paths of error, to the abyss of eternal perdition."* 
 It was then that the emperor propounded to the Roman senate the 
 important question, " whether the worship of Jupiter, or that of 
 Christ, should be the religion of the empire ?" a A formal renuncia- 
 tion of the pagan mythology followed ; a royal edict declared that no 
 one should presume, " in any city, or in any place, to worship an in- 
 animate idol, J)y the sacrifice of a guiltless victim ;" a .the temples of 
 the gods were thrown down, or converted into Christian churches ; 
 and the mystical rites of Eleusis gave place to the simplicity of 
 gospel truths, and the mild religion of the Redeemer. 
 
 a. Gibbon's Decline and Fall, cb. xxriii.
 
 CHAT. V.] GLORY AND FALL OF GREECE. 689 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE GLORY AND THE FALL OF GREECE. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. The CLOSING PERIOD OK GRECIAN HISTORY. General character of the 
 Grecian domestic wars, &c. 2. Other events submitted for our contemplation. 3. Ordinary 
 compends of Grecian history. Object of the present chapter. 
 
 4. THE PERSIAN WARS. 5. BATTLE OF PLAT*' A. Situation of the opposing forces. 6. Ad- 
 vance of the Persians. 7. Trying situation of the Spartans. Sacrifices. 8. Favorable tokens. 
 The Spartan phalanx prepares for battle. The battle-ground. 9. The battle. 10. Mardoaius 
 his fall defeat and flight of the Persians. 1 1. The Athenians carry the Persian intrenchments. 
 Prodigious slaughter of the Persians. 12. The conquered treasure. The contrast. 13. Op- 
 posing traits of Persian and Grecian character. 
 
 14. IMPORTANCE OF THE PERSIAN OVERTHROW. 15. The rising greatness of Greece. 16. 
 Effect of the Persian defeat upon the East. 
 
 17. THE AGE OF PERICLES. Extract from Alison. 18. Themistocles and Cimsn. Pericles 
 and Phidias. (The Olympian Jupiter.) 19, and 20. The grace and elegance of the Athenian 
 edifices of the time of Pericles. 21. The liberality of the people. 
 
 22. Inquiry into the origin and overthrow of the monuments of Grecian genius. FULL DE- 
 VELOPMENT OF THE DEMOCRATIC CHARACTER OF GRECIAN INSTITUTIONS. Early union of ad- 
 ministrative and judicial powers. Their separation in the time of Pericles. Dikast juries. 
 References to arbitrators. The judicature popularized. 23. Collision of parties, and triumph 
 of the reformers. 24. The making and the repealing of laws. Abridged powers of the Ecclesia. 
 The business of ordinary legislation intrusted to the Rlonothetse. The power of indicting the 
 proposers of new laws. Abuse of this power. i!5. Mode ef affixing penalties. Check against 
 its abuse. The study of these laws. 26. Consummation of the Athenian democracy. Leading 
 object in the institution of the dikasteries. They furnish examples of the workings of jury 
 trial. The jury system in England compared with that in Athens. 
 
 27. Causes that led to the especial CULTIVATION OF RHETORIC AND ORATORY. The good not 
 without its attendant evil. 23. Oratory little known in Greece before the time of Pericles. 
 Eloquence of Pericles. 29. The golden age of Grecian eloquence. Athens bears the palm. 
 Lysias, Isocrates, ^Eschines, and Demosthenes. Hume's view of the style of Demosthenes. 
 30. The true character of his eloquence. 31. The secret of his power and influence. 
 
 32. HISTORIANS, POETS, AND PHILOSOPHERS, of the age of Pericles. 33. THE DRAMA. Its 
 development marks the age of Pericles. ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. 34. Transitions 
 of tragedy in the bands of its three masters. 35. Influence of the drama over the Athenians. 
 36. COMEDY. Its character and effects. 37. THE RESULT. The age of Grecian glory was 
 the era of democratic institutions. 
 
 38. CAUSES OF THE DOWNFALL OF ATHENS. Character of the Athenian confederacy. 
 Despotic rjile of Athens over her allies. Athens appropriates the common treasury to her own 
 uses. 39. Her political power based on credit. Unwise policy of depending on foreign re- 
 sources. 40. Extensive judicial powers assumed by the popular assembly. 41. Evils arising 
 therefrom. Ungrateful treatment of Illustrious citizens. 12. Want of public and private vir- 
 tue. Evils arising from the want of a principle of universal justice like that of the Christian re- 
 ligion. Conclusion. 
 
 I. 
 
 1 . The general impression produced on the mind of the reader 
 by a cursory perusal of the closing chapters of Grecian history ex- 
 tending from the opening of the first war with Persia, in the year 
 
 44
 
 690 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAKT III. 
 
 490 B. C., to the reduction of Greece to a Roman province, 146 
 
 B. C., and embracing a period of three hundred and forty 
 
 PERIOD OF f ur years is doubtless that of a confused series of domes- 
 
 GRECIAN tic wars and revolutions, originating in the jealousies and 
 
 ambition of rival States, sanguinary in their progress, 
 
 and destructive to all parties in their final results and /tendencies. 
 
 Such is, indeed, the general character we must ascribe to the several 
 
 Peloponnesian wars, which almost exhausted the power and resources 
 
 of the most prominent Grecian States to the Sacred War, which 
 
 led to the subjection of Greece to the sway of Macedon and to the 
 
 petty jealousies growing out of Achaean influence, and the dissensions 
 
 sown by Macedonian ambition, which led to the final overthrow of 
 
 Grecian liberty, and the reduction of Greece to a province of the 
 
 Roman empire. 
 
 2. Apart, however, from the uniformly disastrous effects of the 
 follies, crimes, and absurdities, which engendered these domestic 
 wars, we find here, submitted for our contemplation, the grand specta- 
 cle of the Persian contest, involving the vain struggle of barbarism 
 against civilization the glories of Thermop' ylas, Mar' athon, Sal'- 
 ainis, and Platse' a the expedition of Cyrus, and the famous " Re- 
 treat of the Ten Thousand" the brilliant career of the conquering 
 Alexander the inroad of the Celts the last struggle of Pyrr' hus 
 and the vain effort of Achaia, in her prime, to stem the fatal tide of 
 Grecian corruption. 
 
 3. The limits of ordinary compends of General History forbid 
 anything more than outline sketches, or general views, of the public 
 life of the Grecians, in which beauty of coloring of necessity gives 
 place to simplicity of narrative and brevity of detail, in which is 
 scarcely detected the philosophy of the causes that were fast hurry- 
 ing on Greece to her destiny and in which little is seen of the do- 
 mestic condition and social character of the Grecian people. We 
 purpose, therefore, to return to a few of the more prominent events 
 of Grecian history, that we may place some of their most interesting 
 peculiarities in a clearer light before the reader to examine, but with 
 brevity, the philosophy of causes and effects, and to lift the veil 
 which hides from view the under-current of social life. 
 
 II. 
 
 4. What may properly be called the closing period of Grecian 
 history opens with the commencement of the Persian wars, brought
 
 CHAP. V.] GLORY AND FALL OF GREECE. 691 
 
 on by the blind amHtion of Darius continued, through the vain- 
 glory of Xerxes and his successor and ending in the THE 
 humiliation of the greatest empire the world then PERSIAN 
 contained. The Greeks, united by a sense of common WAKS - 
 dangers, victorious abroad, and sedulously cultivating learning and 
 the arts at home, might well regard the latter years of the Persian 
 wars, and the subsequent administration of Pericles at Athens, as 
 the period of their greatest glory. 
 
 5. We have spoken briefly of the heroic struggle of the Spartan 
 Leon' idas and his countrymen at Thermop' ylse, and of the Athenians 
 under Miltiades at Mar' athon. We give, from an eloquent 
 
 writer, the following description of the battle of Plata/ a, BATTLE OF 
 
 ' . PLAT2E A. 
 
 both for the sake of its beauty, and to show the effect 
 of the religion of the Greeks upon the military character of the people. 
 Mardonius, the Persian general, left at the head of three hundred 
 thousand men to complete the conquest of Greece after the inglorious 
 flight of Xerxes across the Hellespont, had advanced to the neigh- 
 borhood of Platae'a, when he encountered that part of the Grecian 
 army composed mostly of Spartans, commanded by Pausanias, and 
 numbering about fifty thousand men. The Athenians had previously 
 fallen back to a more secure position, where the entire army had 
 been ordered to concentrate, and Pausanias and his Spartans had 
 but just commenced the retrograde movement when the Persians 
 made their appearance. 
 
 6. " As the troops of Mardonius advanced, the rest of the Persian 
 armament, deeming the task was now not to fight but to pursue, 
 raised their standards and poured forward tumultuously, without 
 discipline or order. Pausanias, pressed by the Persian line, lost no 
 time in sending to the Athenians for succor. But when the latter 
 were on their march with the required aid, they were suddenly in- 
 tercepted by the Greeks in the Persian service, and cut off from the 
 rescue of the Spartans. 
 
 7. " The Spartans beheld themselves thus unsupported with consid- 
 erable alarm. Committing himself to the gods, Pausanias ordained a 
 solemn sacrifice, his whole army awaiting the result, while the shafts 
 of the Persian bowmen poured on them near and fast. But the 
 entrails presented discouraging omens, and the sacrifice was again 
 renewed. Meanwhile the Spartans evinced their characteristic forti- 
 tude and discipline not one man stirring from his ranks until the 
 auguries should assume a more favoring aspect ; all harassed, and
 
 692 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 some wounded, by the Persian arrows, they yet, seeking protection 
 only beneath their broad bucklers, waited with a stern patience the 
 time of their leader and of Heaven. Then fell Gallic' rates, the 
 stateliest and strongest soldier in the whole army, lamenting, not 
 death, but that his sword was as yet undrawn against the invader. 
 
 8. " And still sacrifice after sacrifice seemed to forbid the battle, 
 when Pausanias, lifting his eyes that streamed with tears to the 
 temple of Juno that stood hard by, supplicated the goddess, that if 
 the fates forbade the Greeks to conquer, they might at least fall like 
 warriors. And while uttering this prayer, the tokens waited for be- 
 came suddenly visible in the victims, and the augurs announced the 
 promise of coming victory. Therewith the order of battle ran in- 
 stantly through the army, and, to use the poetical comparison of 
 Plutarch, the Spartan phalanx suddenly stood forth in its strength, 
 like some fierce animal erecting its bristles, and preparing its 
 vengeance for the foe. The ground, broken in many steep and pre- 
 cipitous ridges, and intersected by the Asopus, whose sluggish stream 
 winds over a broad and rushy bed, was unfavorable to the movements 
 of cavalry, and the Persian foot advanced therefore on the Greeks. 
 
 9. " Drawn up in their massive phalanx, the Lacedsemonians pre- 
 sented an almost impenetrable body sweeping slowly on, compact 
 and serried while the hot ajjd undisciplined valor of the Persians, 
 more fortunate in the skirmish than the battle, broke itself in a thou- 
 sand waves upon that moving rock. Pouring on in small numbers 
 at a time, they fell fast round the progress of the Greeks their 
 armor slight against the strong pikes of Sparta their courage with- 
 out skill their numbers without discipline ; still they fought gallant- 
 ly, even when on the ground seizing the pikes with their naked 
 hands, and with the wonderful agility which still characterizes the 
 Oriental swordsmen, springing to their feet, and regaining their arms, 
 when seemingly overcome ; wresting away their enemies' shields, and 
 grappling with them desperately hand to hand. 
 
 10. " Foremost of a band of a thousand chosen Persians, con- 
 spicuous by his white charger, and still more by his daring valor, 
 rode Mardonius, directing the attack fiercer wherever his armor 
 blazed. Inspired by his presence, the Persians fought worthily of 
 their warlike fame, and, even in falling, thinned the Spartan ranks. 
 At length the rash but gallant leader of the Asiatic armies received 
 a mortal wound his skull was crushed in by a stone from the hand 
 of a Spartan. His chosen band, the boast of the army, fell fighting
 
 CHAP. V.] GLORY A3T> FALL OF GREECE. 693 
 
 around him, but his death was the general signal of defeat and flight. 
 Encumbered by their long robes, and pressed by the relentless con- 
 querors, the Persians fled in disorder towards their camp, which was 
 secured by wooden entrenchments, by gates, and towers, and walls. 
 Here, fortifying themselves as they best might, they contended suc- 
 cessfully, and with advantage, against the Lacedaemonians, who were 
 ill skilled in assault and siege. 
 
 11. " Meanwhile the Athenians obtained the victory on the plains 
 over the Greeks of Mardonius, and now joined the Spartans at the 
 camp. The Athenians are said to have been better skilled in the 
 art of siege than the Spartans ; yet at that time their experience 
 could scarcely have been greater. The Athenians were at all 
 times, however, of a more impetuous temper ; and the men who had 
 ' run to the charge' at Marathon, were not to be baffled by the des- 
 perate remnant of their ancient foe. They scaled the walls they 
 effected a breach through which the Tegeans were the first to rush 
 the Greeks poured fast and fierce into the camp. Appalled, dismayed, 
 stupefied by the suddenness and greatness of their loss, the Persians no 
 longer sustained their fame they dispersed in all directions, falling, 
 as they fled, with a prodigious slaughter, so that out of that mighty 
 armament scarce three thousand effected an escape. " a 
 
 1 2. Another writer remarks that " the treasure found in the camp 
 of the Persians on this occasion was immense : the furniture of the 
 tents glittered with gold and silver ; and vessels of the same metals 
 were seen scattered about for ordinary use, and piled up in wagons." 
 " Pausanias, when he entered the tent of Mardonius, and saw the 
 rich hangings, the soft carpets, the couches and tables shining with 
 gold and silver, ordered the Persian slaves to prepare a banquet, such 
 as they were used to set out for their master. When it was spread 
 he bade his Helots set by its side the simple fare of his own ordinary 
 meal, and then invited the Greek officers to mark the folly of the 
 barbarian, who, with such instruments of luxury at his command, had 
 come to rob the Greeks of their scanty store." b 
 
 1 3. In the foregoing we detect some of the prominent traits of Persian 
 and of Grecian character, by which we are enabled to discover the causes 
 that, during a struggle of half a century, brought defeat and humilia- 
 tion upon one nation, and gave victory to the other. On the side 
 of Persia was the vain boast of numbers the tinsel of display with 
 all the glitter, " pomp, and circumstance of war," but none of that 
 
 a. Bulwer's Athens. b. Thirlwall's Greece, i. 280.
 
 694 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAET III. 
 
 moral power which an army derives from an enlightened confidence 
 in its own strength and resources. On the side of the Greeks were 
 the undaunted courage, stern purpose, and firm resolve, which arose 
 from religious faith and disciplined valor. 
 
 III. 
 
 14. But the final overthrow of the Persian hosts on the battle- 
 ground of Platae'a has an importance infinitely beyond that of the 
 
 brilliant spectacle of the contest, the numbers of the slain, 
 OF THE or * ne deliverance of the Greeks from immediate danger. 
 PERSIAN Perhaps no other event in ancient history has been so 
 
 OVERTHROW. ., ,, , . 
 
 momentous m its consequences ; for what would have 
 been the condition of Greece, had barbarian arms prevailed against 
 her, and had she then become a province of the Persian empire ? 
 The greatness which she subsequently attained, and the glory and 
 renown with which she has filled the earth, would never have had an 
 existence. As applicable to this subject we subjoin the following 
 reflections from the author previously quoted. 
 
 15. " When the deluge of the Persian arms rolled back to its 
 eastern bed, and the world was once more comparatively at rest, the 
 continent of Greece rose visibly and majestically above the rest of 
 the civilized earth. Afar in the Latian plains the infant State of 
 Rome was silently and obscurely struggling into strength against the 
 neighboring and petty States in which the old Etrurian civilization 
 was rapidly passing into decay. The genius of Gaul and Germany, 
 yet unredeemed from barbarism, lay scarce known, save where colo- 
 nized by Greeks, in the gloom of its woods and wastes. 
 
 16. " The ambition of Persia, still the great monarchy of the world, 
 was permanently checked and crippled ; the strength of generations 
 had been wasted, and the immense extent of the empire only served 
 yet more to sustain the general peace, from the exhaustion of its 
 forces. The defeat of Xerxes paralyzed the East. Thus Greece was 
 left secure, and at liberty to enjoy the tranquillity it had acquired, 
 and to direct to the arts of peace the novel and amazing energies 
 which had been prompted by the dangers, and exalted by the vic- 
 tories, of war." 
 
 IV. 
 
 17. With the close of the Persian contest properly begins what 
 has been termed the " Age of Pericles, 1 ' the era of Athenian great-
 
 CHAP. V.] GLORY AND FALL OF GREECE. 695 
 
 ness, when Athens, hitherto inferior in magnitude and political im- 
 portance among the Grecian States, having won the high- 
 est martial honors, suddenly took the lead, not less in ** 
 
 Or I-LKICL.LS. 
 
 intellectual progress and peaceful glories, than in politi- 
 cal ascendency. " Nowhere else," remarks a late writer, " is to be 
 found a State so small in its origin, and yet so great in its progress ; 
 so contracted in its territory, and yet so gigantic in its achievements; 
 so limited in numbers, and yet so immortal in genius. Its domin- 
 ions on the continent of Greece did not exceed an English county : 
 its free inhabitants never amounted to thirty thousand citizens and 
 yet these inconsiderable numbers have filled the world with their re- 
 nown : poetry, philosophy, architecture, sculpture, tragedy, comedy, 
 gaometry, physics, history, politics, almost date their origin from 
 Athenian genius ; and the monuments of art with which they have 
 overspread the world still form the standard of taste in every civilized 
 nation on earth. " a 
 
 18. Themistocles and Cimon had restored to Athens all that of 
 which Xerxes had despoiled it, the former having rebuilt its ruins 
 and the latter having given to its public buildings a degree of mag- 
 nificence previously unknown ; but Pericles surpassed them both. 
 The treasury of the State, filled by the tribute wrung from allied or 
 conquered cities, was placed at his disposal, and he knew no limit to 
 expenditure but the popular will, which, fortunately for the glories 
 of Grecian art, kept pace with the vast conceptions of the master de- 
 signer. Most of those famous structures, previously described, 1 * which 
 crowned the Athenian Acropolis, or surrounded its base, were either 
 built, or adorned, by the direction of Pericles, under the superintend- 
 ence of the sculptor Phid' ias. The Parthenon, the Odeum, the gold 
 and ivory statue of the goddess Minerva, and the Olympian Jupiter* 
 
 * This famous statue, being sixty feet high, and made of gold and ivory, was constructed 
 by Phid' ias at the request of the Eleans, and placed in the temple of the god at Olympia. It 
 was such a prodigy of art that it was thought, by the ancients, worthy to be reckoned among 
 the seven wonders of the world. No subsequent artists had the presumption even to imagine 
 that they could imitate it. 
 
 The god was represented as sitting on his throne : in the right hand he held a figure of Vic- 
 tory, also made of gold and ivory in his left a sceptre beautifully adorned with all kinds of 
 metals, and having on the top of it a golden eagle. His brows were encircled with a crown, 
 made to resemble leaves of olive ; his robe was of massive gold, curiously adorned with various 
 figures of animals, and lilies. The sandals too were of gold. The throne was inlaid with all 
 kinds of precious materials ebony, ivory, and gems, and was adorned with sculptures of ex- 
 quisite beauty. Quinctillian said of this statue that " the beauty of it seemed to improve the 
 religion of the beholders, so much did the work express the majesty of the god." WheB 
 
 a. Alison, in Blackwoofs Magazine, July 1837. b. See p. 566.
 
 696 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 the latter two the workmanship of the famous sculptor himself, 
 were alone sufficient to immortalize the " Age of Pericles." But not 
 to Pericles and the artists alone be the honor : it is to be shared by 
 the people, whose love of the sublime and beautiful encouraged them. 
 The following eloquent extract will convey to the reader a vivid idea 
 of the unrivalled grace and elegance of the Athenian edifices of the 
 time of Pericles. 
 
 19. " Then rapidly progressed those glorious fabrics which seemed, 
 as Plutarch gracefully expresses it, endowed with the bloom of a 
 perennial youth. Still the houses of private citizens remained simple 
 and unadorned ; still were the streets narrow and irregular ; and 
 even centuries afterwards, a stranger entering Athens would not at 
 first have recognized the claims of the mistress of Grecian art. But to 
 the homeliness of her common thoroughfares and private mansions, 
 the magnificence of her public edifices now made a dazzling contrast. 
 The Acropolis that towered above the homes and thoroughfares of 
 men a spot too sacred for human habitation became, to use a 
 proverbial phrase, ' a city of the gods.' The citizen was everywhere 
 to be reminded of the majesty of the STATE his patriotism was to 
 be increased by the pride in her beauty his taste to be elevated by 
 the spectacle of her splendor. 
 
 20. " Thus flocked to Athens all who, throughout Greece, were 
 eminent in art. Sculptors and architects vied with each other in 
 adorning the young empress of the seas : then rose the masterpieces 
 of Phid'ias, of Gallic' rates, of Menes'icles, which, either in their 
 broken remains, or in the feeble copies of imitators less inspired, still 
 command so intense a wonder, and furnish models so immortal. 
 And if, so to speak, their bones and relics excite our awe and envy, 
 as testifying of a lovelier and grander race, which the deluge of time 
 has swept away, what, in that day, must have been their brilliant 
 effect unmutilated in their fair proportions fresh in all their linea- 
 ments and hues ? For their beauty was not limited to the symmetry 
 of arch and column, nor their materials confined to the marbles of 
 Pentel' licus and Paros. Even the exterior of the temples glowed 
 with the richest harmony of colors, and was decorated with the purest 
 gold ; an atmosphere peculiarly favorable both to the display and the 
 
 Pbid' ias was asked whence he had derived the idea of this his grandest effort, he replied by 
 repeating the well-known passage in Homer's Iliad, where Jupiter is represented as causing 
 Olympus to tremble on its base by the mere movement of his sable brow. The Olympian 
 Jupiter was the last and greatest of the works of Phid' ias.
 
 CHAE V.] GLORY AXD FALL OF GREECE. 697 
 
 preservation of art, permitted to external pediments and friezes all the 
 minuteness of ornament all the brilliancy of colors : such as in the 
 interior of Italian churches may yet be seen vitiated, in the last, by 
 a gaudy and barbarous taste. 
 
 21. " Nor did. the Athenians spare any cost upon the works that 
 were, like the tombs and tripods of their heroes, to be the monuments 
 of a nation to distant ages, and to transmit the most irrefragable 
 proof ' that the power of ancient Greece was not an idle legend.' 
 The whole democracy were animated with the 'passion of Pericles ; 
 and when Phid' ias recommended marble as a cheaper material than 
 ivory for the great statue of Minerva, it was for that reason that 
 ivory was preferred by the unanimous voice of the assembly. Thus, 
 whether it were extravagance or munificence, the blame in one case, 
 the admiration in another, rests not more with the minister -than the 
 populace. It was, indeed, the great characteristic of those works, 
 that they were entirely the creations of the people : without the 
 people Pericles could not have built a temple, nor engaged a sculptor. 
 The miracles of that day resulted from the enthusiasm of a population 
 yet young full of the first ardor for the beautiful dedicating to 
 the State, as to a mistress, the trophies honorably won, or the treas- 
 ures injuriously extorted and uniting the resources of a nation 
 with the energy of an individual, because the toil, the cost, were 
 borne by those who succeeded to the enjoyment and arrogated the 
 glory." 
 
 22. As we contemplate the beauty of some vast edifice, harmonious 
 in its proportions, perfect in all its adaptations, and towering above 
 us in majestic grandeur, wisdom forbids us to overlook the creative 
 energies on which all its glory rests the resources thaC sustained 
 it, the original conception, the planning of the designer, the toil of 
 the artisans, and the gradual development of the results of their com- 
 bined labors. So, while we contemplate the unrivalled monuments 
 of Grecian genius, long since passed away, a wise political 
 
 _ . -t * i * j DKVEL* 
 
 philosophy requires us to examine, also, into the circum- OPMENT OF 
 stances which gave them origin, and the causes of their THE DEM - 
 final destruction. The age of Pericles that of Grecian EACTEK , OF 
 glory was also that in which the democratic character GRECIAN IN- 
 of Grecian institutions received its fullest development in 
 the important departments of judicature, legislation, and administration . 
 In the early history of Athens the distinction between administrative
 
 698 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 and judicial powers was almost unknown ; for the Athenian magistrates 
 were not only executive but judicial officers also deciding disputes and 
 inflicting punishments and of the same mixed nature were the functions 
 of the Areop' agus and of the senate of Five Hundred an accummu- 
 lation, in the same hands, of powers that must have often led to cor- 
 ruption and oppression. The reform party headed by Pericles trans- 
 ferred the judicial power to numerous dikasts, or panels of jurors, 
 selected from the citizens, six thousand of whom, forming what was 
 called the Heliaea, were annually drawn by lot, and then distributed 
 into panels of five hundred members each ; and to these panels, paid 
 by the State, and each presided over by a magistrate, judicial causes 
 were submitted by lot ; so that no one knew beforehand which jury 
 was to try any particular case. References of private causes to arbi- 
 trators appointed by law, or chosen by mutual consent of parties, 
 were also common each of the parties having the right to appeal to 
 the public jury. The senate of the Areop' agus, the senate of Five 
 Hundred, archons, and other magistrates, were stripped of nearly all 
 their judicial functions ; the laws were brought down from the 
 Acropolis, where justice had been previously administered, to the 
 neighborhood of the market place, where the dikasteries sat ; and 
 thus was the judicature popularized, and democracy enthroned in the 
 tribunals of justice. 
 
 23. The popular triumph was not obtained without a fierce col- 
 lision of parties; for the State was divided between reformers and 
 conservatives, the latter composing the oligarchical party, ever 
 tenacious of power, and unscrupulous of the means of preserving it. 
 When Pericles proposed the connection of Athens and the Piraeus 
 by the Long Walls, the same party did not scruple to invoke foreign 
 aid for the overthrow of the democracy ; but the latter triumphed in 
 all its measures, and, under its rule, Athens, guided by the genius 
 of Pericles, attained the maximum of her power and glory. 
 
 24. By the reforms of Pericles, the making and the repealing of 
 laws subjects which have called forth so much declamatory effort to 
 the disparagement of popular legislation were placed under peculiar 
 solemnities and guarantees, which in a great measure removed the 
 dangers of hasty and unwise decisions. The Ecclesia, or public 
 assembly of the whole people, was no longer, as in the days of Solon, 
 intrusted with the power of either passing or repealing any law of 
 general application ; it could only pass laws affecting individual 
 cases ; and to a magisterial court of sworn jurors called nomothetae,
 
 CHAP. V.] GLORY AND FALL OF GREECE. 609 
 
 numbering from two hundred to a thousand, and selected from the 
 Helia3a, was intrusted the business of ordinary legislation. Early 
 in each year, at a public assembly of the people, the laws were sub- 
 mitted for approval or rejection : at a later period, the laws which 
 the assembly, or private citizens, desired to have repealed, together 
 with propositions of new laws, were brought before the court of the 
 nomothetae. Public advocates were also named to defend the laws 
 attacked, and the decision of the court was final during the year of its 
 jurisdiction. As an important additional security both to the public 
 assembly and the nomothetse, against being entrapped into illegal 
 decisions, if any new measure contravening previous legislation was 
 passed, the proposer of it was liable to indictment and punishment ; 
 for it was his duty to give formal notice of the contradiction, and to 
 propose a repeal of the preexisting law, that contradictory statutes 
 might not at the same time be in operation. The law permitting 
 such an indictment doubtless deterred those not thoroughly con 
 versant with past legislation, from originating new propositions, but 
 it was ere long grossly abused, and made the instrument of personal 
 and party enmity ; for, at a later period, we find the mover of a new law 
 compelled to defend himself, not only against the charge of a formal 
 contradiction of laws, but also against that of alleged mischiefs in. 
 the law passed by his agency a perversion which Pericles never an- 
 ticipated. 
 
 25. A peculiar, not to say ingenious, mode of affixing penalties 
 was adopted. If the accused were found guilty by the dikast jury, 
 the accuser first named a given amount of punishment it might be 
 a fine, imprisonment, banishment, or death then a lighter punish- 
 ment was proposed by the accused himself; and the jury was bound 
 to choose the one or the other without any modification. It was 
 thus the interest of the accuser not to name a punishment too severe, 
 lest its very severity should cause its rejection ; and the interest of 
 the accused not to name one too mild, lest the jury should select the 
 other. This was a common mode of determining the penalty under 
 the Athenian laws. As a check against its abuse, if the verdict of 
 guilty did not receive the suffrages of at least one-fifth of the jury, 
 then the accuser himself was liable to a heavy fine. Such were the 
 safeguards, enacted in a truly conservative spirit, which Pericles and 
 his co-reformers threw round the measures of legislation, and the ad- 
 ministration of justice. From the study of these laws and their results 
 from the ingenuity displayed in their enactment, and the ingenuity
 
 700 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 which still found the means of perverting them to the purposes of 
 individual and party animosity modern legislators may gather much 
 political wisdom. 
 
 26. The establishment of the popular juries or paid dikasteries, 
 and of the legislative assembly of the uomothetae, often erroneously 
 attributed to Solon, a was the consummation of the Athenian democ- 
 racy the culminating point towards which the efforts of the liberal 
 party had long been tending. The leading object in the institution 
 of the dikasteries was to guard against that corruption which was a 
 prevalent vice among wealthy members of the aristocracy, who were 
 not only often insubordinate to the magistrates, but who freely resorted 
 to intimidation and bribery to promote selfish and party ends. All 
 history, until a recent period, shows how difficult it has been to make 
 rich and powerful criminals effectively amenable to justice. But 
 the dikasteries of Pericles, owing to the number of those who com- 
 posed them, their secret suffrage, and the impossibility of knowing 
 beforehand who would sit in any particular case, seem as far removed 
 as possible from corruption and intimidation. They furnish examples 
 of the workings of jury trial in its broadest scale, and exhibit, in ex- 
 aggerated proportions, both the excellencies and the defects of the 
 jury system. In England, during a long period, the jury, justly 
 called the palladium of English liberties, was kept in subordination 
 to the government its members liable to be fined and imprisoned 
 for rendering a verdict contrary to the dictation of the judge but in 
 ancient Athens, more than two thousand years ago, the system 
 started forth at once in its full maturity, the jury being judge of the 
 law and the testimony, and without being bound by the precedents 
 of former decisions. 
 
 VI. 
 
 27. There were no professional advocates among the Athenians ; 
 but plaintiffs and defendants might come before the jury with speeches 
 
 prepared by others, or with friends to speak for them. 
 
 CULTIVATION * . ' 
 
 OF EHBI- A certain power of speech therefore became necessary, 
 
 OEIC AND no t on ly f or politicians, but also for private citizens to 
 
 vindicate their rights, or repel accusations in a court 
 
 of justice. Accordingly, the age of Pericles was that in which style 
 
 and speech began to be assiduously cultivated ; we begin to hear of 
 
 the rhetorician and the sophist as persons of influence and celebrity ; 
 
 a. Grote, v. 381.
 
 CHAP, v.] GLORY" AND FALL OF GREECE. 701 
 
 and the composers of written speeches to be delivered by others 
 began to multiply, and to acquire an importance previously unknown. 
 Yet while these circumstances stimulated to the highest developments 
 of Grecian genius in the art of oratory, the good was not without its 
 attendant evil ; for at a time when the citizen pleaded his own cause 
 before the dikastery, the rhetorician was viewed by many with jealousy, 
 as imparting to those who were rich enough to buy it, "a peculiar 
 skill in the common weapons, which made them seem like fencing 
 masters, or professional swordsmen, amidst a society of untrained 
 duellists." a A similar objection, however, might be made to almost 
 any useful attainment ; but it only exemplifies the truth of the adage, 
 that " Knowledge is power." 
 
 28. Eloquence or oratory, which Cicero calls " the friend of peace 
 and the companion of tranquillity, requiring for her cradle a com- 
 monwealth already well established and flourishing," was scarcely 
 known in Greece before the time of Pericles, when it suddenly arose 
 in Athens to a great height of perfection. Pericles himself, whose 
 great aim was to sway the assemblies of the people to his will, culti- 
 vated oratory with such application and success, that the poets of his 
 day said of him, that on some occasions the goddess of persuasion? 
 with all her charms, seemed to dwell on his lips, and that on others 
 his discourse had all the vehemence of thunder to move the souls of 
 his hearers. It was said of Pericles that whenever he was to speak 
 in public such was his solicitude that he first addressed a prayer to 
 the gods " That not a word might escape him unsuitable to the 
 occasion ;" and it was the power of eloquence that enabled him, 
 during forty years, to maintain the most unbounded influence over 
 the inconstant and capricious Athenians, who were the most jealous 
 of their liberties of any people in the world. 
 
 29. The golden age of Grecian eloquence is embraced in a period 
 of a hundred and thirty years, reckoning from the time of Pericles ; 
 and during this period Athens bore the palm alone ; for there were 
 neither Spartan, Argive, Corinthian, nor Theban orators, to contest 
 the honor with her. Of the many eminent Athenian orators, the 
 most distinguished were Lysias, Isocrates, .ZEschines, and Demosthe- 
 nes. The first was admired for the perspicuity, purity, sweetness, 
 and delicacy of his style. He seldom spoke in public, but coinposed 
 orations and pleadings for others. Isocrates opened a school for the 
 instruction of youth in eloquence, and was equally esteemed for the 
 
 a. Grote, v. 404.
 
 702 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 excellence of his compositions, and his success in teaching others. His 
 style was more smooth, flowing, elegant, and adorned, than that of 
 Lysias, his thoughts more lively and delicate ever exhibiting a 
 great love of virtue, and respect for religion. The style of ^Eschines, 
 the rival of Demosthenes, was distinguished for its delicacy, ease, 
 order, clearness, and precision ; that of Demosthenes for its variety, 
 earnestness, power, fervor, rapidity, and passion, all exemplified in 
 plain unornamented language, and a strain of close, business-like 
 reasoning. " His style," as Hume observes, " is rapid harmony ad- 
 justed to the sense ; vehement reasoning, without any appearance of 
 art ; disdain, anger, boldness, and freedom, involved in a continued 
 strain of argument." The true character of the eloquence of De- 
 mosthenes is happily summed up in the following extract : 
 
 30. " The question has often been raised as to the secret of the 
 success of Demosthenes. How is it that he attained to his astonish 
 ing preeminence ? How is it that, in a faculty which is common to 
 the whole species, that of communicating our thoughts and feelings 
 in language, the palm is conceded to him alone by the unanimous 
 and willing consent of all nations and ages ? And this universal 
 approbation will appear the more extraordinary to a reader who for 
 the first time peruses his unrivalled orations. They do not exhibit 
 any of that ostentatious declamation on which loosely hangs the 
 fame of so many pretenders to eloquence. There appears no deep 
 reflection to indicate a more than ordinary penetration, or any phi- 
 losophical remarks to prove the extent of his acquaintance with the 
 great moral writers of his country. He affects no learning, and he dis- 
 plays none. He aims at no elegance ; he seeks no glaring ornaments ; 
 he rarely touches the heart with a soft or melting appeal, and when he 
 does it is only with an effect in which a third-rate artist would have 
 surpassed him. He had no wit, no humor, no vivacity, in our accept- 
 ance of these terms, qualities which contribute so much to the forma- 
 tion of a modern orator. He wanted all these undeniable attributes 
 of eloquence, and yet who rivals him ? 
 
 31. " The secret of his power is simple ; it lies essentially in this, 
 that his political principles were interwoven with his very spirit ; 
 they were not assumed to serve an interested purpose, to be laid aside 
 when he descended from the rostrum, and resumed when he sought 
 to accomplish an object. No ; they were deeply seated in his heart, 
 and emanated from its profoundest depth. The more his country 
 was environed by dangers, the more steady was his resolution.
 
 CHAP, V.] GLORY AND FALL OF GREECE. 703 
 
 Nothing ever impaired the truth and integrity of his feelings, or 
 weakened his generous conviction. It was his undeviating firmness, 
 his disdain of all compromise, that made him the first of statesmen 
 and orators ; in this lay the substance of his power, the primary 
 foundation of his superiority ; the rest was merely secondary. The 
 mystery of his mighty influence, then, lay in his HONESTY ; and it is 
 this that gave warmth and tone to his feelings, an energy to his 
 language, and an impression to his manner, before which every im- 
 putation of sincerity must have immediately vanished. " a 
 
 VII. 
 
 32. Of the historians, poets, and philosophers, who adorned the 
 brightest period of Grecian history, our limits forbid us to speak in 
 detail, but among them are names that will ever be 
 
 . . . HISTORIANS, 
 
 cherished and venerated, while genius and worth continue POETS) AND 
 to be held in admiration. Among historians may be PHILOSO- 
 mentioned, as most conspicuous, the names of Herod'- 
 otus, Thucyd' ides, Xen' ophon, and Polyb' ius ; among poets and 
 dramatists, JEs' chylus, Soph' ocles, and Eurip' ides ; and among phi- 
 losophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, besides those previously men- 
 tioned in a former chapter. Volumes would be requisite to describe 
 the character and works of these writers, and to convey a just view 
 of the indebtedness of the moderns to the lights which they kindled. 
 
 33. We should, however, omit one of the marked features of 
 Athenian life, did we not notice the drama not merely 
 
 as an element in the political character of the Athenians, 
 
 * DRAMA. 
 
 but also as a picture of society, and an expositor of the 
 Athenian mind in the departments of politics, religion, and philoso- 
 phy. The great development of Grecian dramatic genius, never be- 
 fore nor since equalled by any people, also marks the age of Pericles, 
 and the ascendency of the Athenian democracy. The first who 
 rendered the tragic drama illustrious was JEs' chylus, who had fought 
 with distinguished valor in the combats of Mar' athon and Sal' amis, 
 and had afterwards served with the Athenian troops at Platae' a. He 
 therefore flourished at the exact period when the freedom of Greece, 
 rescued from foreign enemies, was exulting in its first strength ; and 
 his writings are characteristic of the boldness and vigor of the age. 
 Soph' ocles, one of the generals of the Athenian armament against 
 Samos in the year 440 B. C., succeeded him ; and Eurip 'ides, a co- 
 
 . a. Sketch of Demosthenes in Anthon's Clas. Diet.
 
 704 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 temporary of Soph' ocles, was the last of the three great masters of 
 the drama the three being embraced within the period of a single 
 century. 
 
 34. It is curious to observe the transitions through which tragedy 
 passed in this short period, and in the hands of its three masters. 
 Each borrows his subjects from the legendary world, but differs from 
 his predecessor in the manner of handling them. In JEs' chylus the 
 sterner passions alone are appealed to, and in language replete with 
 bold metaphor and gigantic hyperbole : Venus, and her inspirations, 
 are excluded : the charms of love are unknown ; but the gods vast, 
 majestic, in shadowy outline, and in the awful sublimity of power, 
 pass before and awe the beholder. That deep reverence of the gods, 
 and love of the heroic, which characterized the Greeks at this period, 
 are everywhere conspicuous in the tragedies of JEs' chylus. In 
 Soph' ocles we find a greater range of emotions figures more dis- 
 tinctly seen, a more expanded dialogue, simplicity of speech mixed 
 with rhetorical declamation, and the highest degree of poetic beauty. 
 In Eurip' ides, rhetoric becomes still more prominent, the legendary 
 characters assume more the garb of humanity, the tender sentiments 
 love, pity, compassion are invoked, the reason is appealed to, 
 and an air of exquisite delicacy and refinement embellishes the whole. 
 Soph' ocles and Eurip' ides exhibit greater familarity, than is found 
 in their predecessor, with the art of rhetoric, the debates of poli- 
 ticians, and the contests of litigants before the dikasteries, a modi- 
 fication of the tragic drama in strict accordance with the increasing 
 popular character of Athenian institutions. 
 
 35. To estimate the influence which the drama exerted over the 
 Athenians, we must reflect that, in the time of Pericles, a large 
 number of tragedies was presented on the Athenian stage every year ; 
 that it was rare to repeat any one a second time ; that the theatre 
 of Bacchus, in which they were represented, was capable of accom- 
 modating thirty thousand persons ; that, as religious observances, 
 they formed part of the civil establishment ; and that admission to 
 them was, virtually, free to every Athenian citizen. If we conceive 
 of the entire population of a large city listening almost daily to 
 those immortal compositions whose beauty first stamped tragedy as 
 a separate department of poetry, we shall be satisfied that so powerful 
 poetic influences were never brought to act upon any other people ; 
 and that the tastes, the sentiments, and the intellectual standard of
 
 CHAP. V.] GLORY AND FALL OF GREECE. 705 
 
 the Athenians, must have been sensibly improved and exalted by 
 such lessons. 8 - 
 
 36. Comedy, of later growth than tragedy, arose out of the full 
 license which was given, in the festive procession in honor of the god 
 Bacchus, of scoffing at any one present. In the time of Pericles 
 comedy became an important agent and partisan in the political warfare 
 of Athens. Cotemporary men and subjects were freely dealt with on 
 the stage, and, often, under their real names ; and in one of the 
 comedies of Cratinus, Cimon, the rival of Pericles, is highly eulogized, 
 while the latter is bitterly derided. With unmeasured and unsparing 
 license, comedy attacked, under the veil of satire, institutions, poli- 
 ticians, philosophers, poets, private citizens by name, and even the 
 gods also ; and not only did it expose all that was really ludicrous 
 or contemptible, but often, with an excess of profligacy, cast scorn 
 and derision on that which was innocent,.or even meritorious. While 
 such license was tolerated, we need not wonder at the excess of 
 bitter personality which characterizes Athenian literature generally. 
 
 37. In this closing sketch of the age of Grecian glory we again 
 advert to the fact that it was democratic Athens that was the light 
 and the eye of Greece, and that nearly all the great men whose 
 names we have mentioned in this connection, were either Athenian 
 born, or nurtured in her schools of learning. It has been common 
 for a class of modern writers to deny to democratic institutions that 
 enlightened public spirit, and fostering regard for individual worth, 
 which are requisite to call forth the brightest conceptions of genius, 
 and to attain the highest perfection of art. We cannot here enter 
 upon an argument in favor of democratic influences, but we satisfac- 
 torily point to democratic Athens, surrounded by a halo of greatness, 
 and shining with no borrowed lustre, proving, if it prove no more, 
 that taste, and genius, and art. are not incompatible with republican 
 simplicity. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 38. Having thus considered the bright and favorable points of 
 Athenian character, our attention is next called to the dark shades 
 in the picture, by an inquiry into the causes of the brief 
 
 f* iii * i ' i CAUSES 
 
 tenure or existence which democratic Athens enjoyed ; O F THE 
 for the glory and renown with which she has filled the DOWNFALL 
 earth were the products of a single century. b While 
 
 a. Grote, viii. 322. 
 
 b. In reality, less than a century ; for, reckoning from the great defeat of the Persians In the 
 
 45
 
 706 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 some have traced her downfall to causes merely political, and to the 
 outward circumstances by which she was surrounded, others, enter- 
 taining monarchical principles of government, have attributed it to 
 what they call the disorganizing tendency of democratic institutions 
 the consuming fever and exhausting violence of democratic activity. 
 We shall best explain our views on this subject by first noticing some 
 of the political errors of the Athenians, and some of the defects in 
 their constitution. 
 
 39. In the time of Pericles the Athenians were at the head of a 
 large confederacy, which had been originally formed by the free con- 
 sent of all parties ; but the federal league had been gradually con- 
 verted into an empire, over which Athens ruled with the authority 
 of a despot. Maintaining that none of the members had a right to 
 endanger the safety of the league by withdrawing from it, she had 
 repressed, by force, several attempts at disunion ; and, to preserve 
 her power, had proceeded to the extremity of treating as subjects all 
 her allies, which were mostly small cities or islands. In return for 
 the protection which she afforded them, she demanded a heavy 
 tribute took the common treasury, which had been originally es- 
 tablished at Delos, under her own care, and denied any accountability 
 for its expenditure, speciously alleging that the savings of her prudence, 
 or the earnings of her valor, might be justly appropriated to her 
 own uses. It was the treasure thus obtained wrested from un- 
 willing allies that supported much of the luxury of the Athenians ; 
 and it was to the same, extortions of injustice, that the edifices with 
 which Pericles adorned the metropolis owed their existence. 
 
 40. The secret of the decay of that political ascendency which 
 Athens had attained, is to be found in the unsubstantial nature of 
 her power. Her political greatness arose mostly from artificial and 
 moral causes, rather than natural resources, and was based on credit, 
 which the first calamity was ever liable to destroy. Thus when her 
 arms met with a reverse in Sicily, her injured allies, no longer in- 
 timidated by her power, deserted her in the hour of need ; and again, 
 the loss of her navy at Aigos-Potamos occasioned a still greater de- 
 
 battle of Platae' a, 479 B. C., to the disastrous overthrow of the Athenians before Syracuse, 413 
 C. C., we have a period of only sixty-six years ; and it was during this period that the noblest of 
 the Athenian edifices were built, that poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, oratory, history, 
 philosophy, &c., attained their greatest eminence throughout Greece, while Athens was the 
 centre of their glory. Within the century following the battle of Platae' a, we find, among 
 others little less distinguished, the following names of eminent Grecians Herod' otus, Thucyd'- 
 ides, Xen' ophon, JEs' chylus, Soph' ocles. Eurip' ides, Cimon, Pericles, Socrates, Plato, 
 Aristotle, and Demosthenes, a more brilliant galaxy than any other century has witnessed.
 
 CHAP. V.] GLORY ASD FALL OF GREECE. 707 
 
 fection frjm her, and a general dissolution of the empire over which 
 she had exercised her sway. In prosperity there were others to 
 second her ambition, and add to her energies ; but in adversity sho 
 was compelled to stand alone. " Dependence upon other resources 
 than the native population," remarks a writer previously quoted, 
 " has been a main cause of the destruction of despotisms ; and 
 it cannot fail, sooner or later, to be equally pernicious to the re- 
 publics that trust to it. The resources of taxation confined to free- 
 men and natives are almost incalculable ; the resources of tribute 
 wrung from foreigners and dependents are sternly limited and ter- 
 ribly precarious they rot away the true spirit of industry in the 
 people that demand the impost they implant ineradicable hatred in 
 the States that concede it." a A wise political lesson whose truth is 
 enforced by the history of all ages. 
 
 41. A most pernicious evil in the Athenian constitution was the 
 frequent assumption of the highest judicial powers by the public as- 
 sembly of all the citizens. While the jurisdiction of the court of the 
 Areop'agus was mostly confined to charges of maiming, poisoning, 
 and murder, and of the dikast juries to civil cases between indi- 
 viduals, a multitude of undefined cases, affecting more particularly 
 the interests of the State, or in which the State was represented as 
 the injured party, could be brought for final adjudication before the 
 people themselves, in the public assembly of the ecclesia. This 
 assembly, on the principle, doubtless, that vox populi est vox dei, 
 that " the voice of the people is the voice of God" and that the 
 people can do no wrong, taking upon itself the highest judicial func- 
 tions in cases affecting the lives of the most noted citizens, exercised 
 a kind of chancery jurisdiction, in which forms of law were supposed 
 to yield to the plain demands of justice. 
 
 42. The prominent evil arising from the judicial character of the 
 assembly was that the most worthy citizens were often arraigned be- 
 fore an impatient and turbulent populace, liable to be swayed by 
 caprice and prejudice, by party-spirit and the eloquence of individ- 
 uals, and seldom possessing the wisdom, or exercising the candor, 
 due to justice. The numbers of such a jury prevented all responsi- 
 bility, and where corruption feared not detection, the great and the 
 wealthy could too often purchase freedom, or soften the rigors of law, 
 while the chances were decidedly against the poor man, especially if 
 he had to contend against wealthy and influential accusers. That 
 
 a. Bulwer's Athens.
 
 708 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART 11L 
 
 which was designed as a regulator of the workings of the constitution 
 thus became, eventually, the destroyer of its equilibrium ; and, by 
 the fickleness of its measures, the corruption to which it was exposed, 
 and the frequent injustice of its decrees, hastened the downfall of the 
 State. The black ingratitude with which the Athenians treated their 
 most illustrious citizens Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Socrates, 
 and a host of others shows the exceeding error of their legislators in 
 converting a popular assembly into a tribunal for the dispensation 
 of justice. a 
 
 43. But aside from the political errors and constitutional defects 
 already mentioned, there was a still greater and all-pervading evil, 
 which lay at the root of all others, and was the mighty engine that 
 hurried Athens onward to her ruin. We allude to the want of that 
 public and private virtue which is based on the religion of Christian- 
 ity ; without which, democratic institutions never had and never can 
 have any lasting security. The crude and corrupt religion of the 
 Grecians, however it might tend to arouse martial heroism, infuse 
 poetic inspiration, and foster artistic genius, had little tendency, in 
 itself, to promote individual virtue ; for the characters of the Grecian 
 gods were stained with the darkest crimes ; and where philosophy 
 
 a. The unhappy fate of Miltiades, the hero of Marathon, has often been cited in proof of the 
 assertion that " republics are fickle and. ungrateful." Athens has indeed much to answer for 
 on the score of ingratitude ; but the republican system is not to be held responsible for those 
 defects in the Athenian constitution out of which the evil arose ; and in the case of Miltiades, 
 which is often referred to in this connection, we think it will be found that the Athenians were 
 not greatly in the wrong. 
 
 The behavior of Miltiades at Marathon was indeed highly meritorious, and for it he received 
 the plaudits of an admiring people ; but, grown giddy with praise, lie seems to have lost his 
 patriotism and prudence; and, availing himself of his unbounded popularity, he solicits and 
 obtains of the Athenians the command of an expedition whose destination was known to him- 
 self alone : assuring them of the honorableness of the enterprise, and promising to enrich the 
 public coffers with a vast amount of booty. Much treasure was spent, and lives were lost, and, 
 through the seeming incapacity or treachery of the commander, the expedition terminated in 
 disaster and disgrace. A rapid and decisive change now takes place in the popular estimation 
 of Miltiades. His motives and objects are inquired into ; and it is found that private resent- 
 ment against a prominent citizen of Paros was the motive of the expedition, while the project 
 was in itself unprincipled, and dishonorable to the Athenian people, as the Parians had not 
 taken part with the Persians in the war. The popular resentment against Miltiades is aggra- 
 vated by the idea of undeserved admiration and misplaced confidence ; and the recent favorite 
 is impeached as worthy of death. Gratitude for previous services does not exempt him from 
 punishment, but it is an extenuating circumstance that mitigates the penalty ; and a flue, not 
 unreasonably heavy, is imposed upon him. The death of Miltiades, it must be recollected, 
 which occurs so opportunely to excite our sympathy, arose not from the trial nor the flue, but 
 from the wound which he received, not in battle, but in a fall, on a night visit of doubtful 
 propriety. 
 
 From all the circumstances we are therefore led to conclude that the case of Miltiades 
 illustrates neither the fickleness nor the ingratitude of the Athenians, but rather, for once at 
 teast, the inflexible sternness of Athenian justice, tempered by mercy.
 
 CHAP. V.] GLORY AXD FALL OF GREECE. 709 
 
 inculcated the practice of virtue, it was mostly from considerations 
 cf worldly policy the creature of circumstances. , There was no 
 principle of universal justice like that of the Christian religion, on 
 which the laws were based, society organized, and by which individual 
 conduct was regulated. This evil is far greater in a democracy than 
 in an oligarchy or a monarchy ; for in the former a corrupt people, 
 being themselves the rulers, will produce a corrupt administration of 
 the wisest laws, and corruption is but another name for weakness 
 and decay ; while in a monarchy the people may long remain igno- 
 rant and vicious without thereby seriously affecting the principles or 
 policy of the government. Throughout all Grecian history we ob- 
 serve, both among rulers and people, with some noble exceptions, a 
 disregard of the principles of universal justice and the Athenians 
 even sent into banishment one of their worthiest citizens, apparently 
 from envy that the universal rectitude of his conduct had gained for 
 him the appellation of " The Just." We find, then, an abundance of 
 causes to account for the premature decay of Athenian greatness, 
 without attributing it, as Mr. Alison has done, to " the violence of 
 the fever which in republican States exhausts the strength and wears 
 out the energies of the people. " a 
 
 tt. See Blackicooft Magaiine* Review of Bulwer's Athens, July 1837.
 
 710 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE FIRST PERIOD OF ROMAN HISTORY : FROM THE FOUNDING 
 OF ROME TO THE CONQUESTS OF GREECE AND CARTHAGE. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. AUTHENTICITY OF EARLY ROMAN HISTORY. What criticism has shown in 
 relation thereto. 2. Artificial chronology of early history. Early Roman chronology. 3. 
 Why the narrative of early Roman history is not reliable. Sources of early Roman history. 
 4. Legendary poems, &c. 
 
 5. HISTORY OF REGAL ROME. Early inhabitants of Italy. Legend of ^Eneas. The Latins. 
 Alban Rome. Common name of the early Roman kings. 6. Primary causes of the rapid 
 growth of the Alban colony. Character of the population. 7. Probable origin of the Sabine 
 legend. Increase of population by conquests and alliances. 8. Rome evidently conquered by 
 the Sabines. Sabine institutions predominant. Titus Tatius. 9. The Sabino-Roman dynasty. 
 Improbabilities respecting it. The supposed Alban war. 10. Tarquin and the Etruscans. 
 Etruscan civilization. 11. The supposition that Tarquin conquered Rome. Causes of the 
 murder of the first Tarquin. Servius, and Tarquin the Proud. 12. Additional improbabilities 
 in the commonly-received history of Regal Rome. All that we certainly know of this portion 
 of Roman nistory. 
 
 13. RESULTS OF CRITICISM. The belief which It still leaves to us : the founding of the 
 city the Sabines the Albans. 14. The beautiful episodes of Livy why worthy of our con- 
 sideration. 15. The historians Niebuhr and Ferguson. Circumstances which show the early 
 greatness of Rome under the kings. 
 
 10. CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF EARLY ROME. Importance of a knowledge of the ma- 
 terials of Roman society. 17. The three tribes into which the Romans were divided. 18. Di- 
 vision of the tribes into curia. The gcntes or houses. 19. The gentes the original citizens, o? 
 Patricians. The relation of clients/tip. 20. Origin of the Plebeians. In early times not citi- 
 zens. Their struggles with the Patricians. 21. The Roman senate. Its supposed origin. 22. 
 The Comitia Curiata, or general assembly of the people. 23. The Roman king : his powers 
 and revenues. 24. First division of the Plebeians into tribes. 25. Farther efforts of Servius to 
 elevate the Plebeians. 26. New military organization of the people. The assembly of the 
 centuries. The institutions of Servius not fully carried into effect. 
 
 27. PLEBEIAN AND PATRICIAN CONTESTS, after the downfall of royalty. Increasing power of 
 the Patricians. 28. Plebeian secession. OfHce of the tribunes. 29. Relative situation of 
 Patricians and Plebeians at the time of the conquest of Greece. Great power ultimately ac- 
 quired by the tribunes. 30. Complete development of the constitution. Subsequent legisla- 
 tive enactments. Relation of the provinces to the city. Guarantees for the perpetuity of the 
 constitution. 
 
 31. RELIGIOUS NOTIONS of the Romans. 32. The Roman ceremonial law. The priesthood. 
 Images of the gods. Growing indifference to the ceremonies of religion. 
 
 33. MODE OF LIVING SOCIAL CONDITION, &c., UNDER THE KINGS. Agriculture and CODC- 
 merce. 34. Domestic life. Evidences of the rudeness of the age. 35. Money and coinage. 
 Relative value of copper and iron. Artistic genius of the Romans. 36. Early language of 
 Rome. Late origin of Roman literature. Poetry and History. 
 
 I. 
 
 1. Almost down to the beginning of the present century, early 
 Roman history, as transmitted by Livy, was received without any 
 doubt as to its authenticity ; but criticism has since shown both
 
 CHAP. VI.] EARLY ROMAN HISTORY. 711 
 
 that the chronology of the early Roman annals is highly uncertain, 
 
 and that many of the glowing pictures which adorn the 
 
 , ,, i T> -M. i i i_ i -L AUTHEXTIOI- 
 
 pages of the early Homan writers, and which have been Ty OF EARLY 
 
 unhesitatingly copied as authentic by modern historians, KOMAN 
 are but fictions of a traditionary and poetic age. 
 
 2. In the Indian, Egyptian, and Babylonian eras, we find large 
 spaces of time divided according to certain arithmetical proportions, 
 showing that they are artificial arrangements to which history has 
 been arbitrarily adapted. The same also occurs in early Roman 
 history, down to the burning of the city by the G-auls. For this 
 period three hundred and sixty years are assumed by the earliest 
 Roman historians, two-thirds of which number, or two hundred and 
 forty years, are allotted to the seven kings, and the remaining third, 
 or one hundred and twenty years, to the commonwealth. Again, the 
 middle of the reign of the fourth king, Ancus Martius, the era 
 assigned for the creation of the plebeian order by the establishment 
 of the common law of the plebeians, and the first plebeian estate in 
 lands, falls in the middle of the first division ; so that each of the 
 three divisions of early Roman history contains just ten times 
 twelve years ;. and no one can doubt that this is an arbitrary chro- 
 nology. Other instances of arithmetical proportions being made the 
 basis of historical divisions might be mentioned. The results of the 
 critical investigations of the learned Niebuhr show that the chronol- 
 ogy of the Roman kings, with the exception, perhaps, of the last, is 
 an invention of later times, and that even down to the Gallic con- 
 quest Roman chronology is made up from unreliable materials. 
 
 3. Of the detailed narrative also, of early Roman history, criti- 
 cism compels us to reject much that was once deemed authentic. It 
 was the custom of the Roman pontiffs, from very early times, to 
 record on whited tablets the principal events of each year, such as 
 the names of the magistrates, wars, treaties, &c. ; but they appear 
 never to have entered into details ; and even these pontificial annals 
 were almost wholly lost, as Livy asserts, in the burning of Rome by 
 the Gauls. A few barren family genealogies probably escaped the 
 general ruin ; and these, with the few meagre records that had been 
 preserved, or that were correctly restored from memory, appear to 
 be almost the only genuine sources of Roman history before the Gallic 
 conquest, and even these did not extend back to the times of the 
 kings. From what source then, we may ask, did Livy derive the 
 minute details, which he has given, of events prior to the burning of
 
 712 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 Home ? Doubtless, we answer, mostly from poetic lays, which arose 
 from traditionary legends, like those of the Grecian heroes and demi- 
 gods. 
 
 4. Thus there was a variety of legends, some Grecian and others 
 Roman, concerning the founding of Rome ; and in the commonly-re- 
 ceived Roman legend of Romulus Niebuhr has pointed out what 
 portions formed part of an ancient heroic poem, and what were the 
 additions of later times. So, also, nearly all of what is called the 
 history of the Roman kings has been resolved into a prose narrative 
 from ancient legendary poems that were transmitted from generation 
 to generation, and often rehearsed, to the sound of music, at the 
 banquets of the great. Of the degree of credit that should be at- 
 tached to the claims of such legends to historical authenticity we 
 need not speak. They may indeed rest, for the most part, on a his- 
 torical basis, but where the reality ends, and fiction begins, will 
 probably never be known. 
 
 II. 
 
 5. All we know of the early inhabitants of central and western 
 Italy, who were subsequently gathered into the community of Regal 
 
 TTT*,,>, Rome, confirms the belief that among them was a stock 
 
 HISTORY <J 
 
 OF REGAL of Pelasgic origin, nearly akin to the Trojans ; and it is 
 ROME. no j. Improbable that early Pelasgic migrations from the 
 coast of Troy to Sicily and Italy generated the poetical legend of 
 tineas fleeing from the destruction of Ilium, and bearing his house- 
 hold gods and religious worship to the " fair Ausonian shore." The 
 Latins inhabitants of Latium may have been, in part, descendants 
 of this Pelasgic race. According to the accounts which the later 
 Romans believed, a colony from the Latin town of Alba established 
 itself on the Palatine, one of the seven hills of Rome. The leaders 
 of the supposed colony were called Remus and Romus or Romulus, 
 names evidently derived from that of Rome itself, and, probably, 
 like the Egyptian name Pharaoh, simply a gathering, into one appel- 
 lation, of the kings or captains who, for an indefinite period, exer- 
 cised government there. a 
 
 6. The rapid growth of the Alban colony, in which all writers 
 agree, may be attributed, primarily, to the adoption of the Greek 
 custom of consecrating a spot within the walls as an asylum to fugi- 
 tives from the surrounding people. A knowledge of this policy 
 
 a. Newman's Regal Rome, p. 40.
 
 CHAP. VL] EARLY ROMAN HISTORY. 713 
 
 illustrates the whole history of Regal Rome. During the wars and 
 commotions incident to an early stage of society, great numbers of 
 refugees sought protection and a home within the walls of this bandit 
 tribe ; for Alban Rome was evidently a robber city ; one which, 
 like the petty cities of early Greece, practiced piracy to wards foreign 
 cities, and gloried in the successful daring of its warriors ; a kind 
 of political morality that has been propagated to a late age, but de- 
 veloped on so broad a scale that its true character is often concealed 
 under false names of national glory. 
 
 7. The mass of those who nocked to Rome must have been males-; 
 and it is not unlikely that they resorted to violent means for carry- 
 ing off young women from the neighboring tribes. This not a single 
 act, perpetrated at the festival of the Consualia, but a custom per- 
 severed in for a series of years, and probably under successive kings 
 might well be resented by the injured parties ; and nothing more 
 natural than that the traditions of this stormy period of Alban Rome 
 should grow into the well-told Sabine legend. As a community that 
 looked to warlike achievements for prosperity and power would seek 
 to increase its population by every available means, not only were 
 the conquered inhabitants of neighboring towns transferred in mass 
 to Rome, where they received only th'e partial rights of citizenship, 
 but foreigners were admitted by treaty stipulations their chieftains 
 being incorporated into the patrician aristocracy, and their followers 
 into the ranks of the plebeians. 
 
 8. The Sabines, also a warlike people, of simple tastes and rustic 
 manners, by whatever cause stimulated, brought their arms against 
 Alban Rome ; and although no details of the war can be received as 
 historical, it is evident that Rome, virtually conquered by them, re- 
 ceived an entirely new character, and that Sabine institutions the 
 senate, with its forms and regulations the division of the patrician 
 Quirites into thirty curiae, and of the whole population into tribes 
 the system of clientage and the precepts and ceremonies of re- 
 ligion then became the groundwork of the State. The pretended 
 joint reign of Titus Tatius with the Latin king seems to be a legend 
 adapted to veil the Sabine conquest. 
 
 9. The continuous story of the reigns of Numa Pompilius, Tullus 
 Hostilius, and Ancus Martius three elective monarchs forming the 
 Sabino-Roman dynasty, and filling an entire century of Regal Rome 
 with continued military triumphs is highly improbable ; exciting a 
 suspicion that the names of those kings only are preserved who were
 
 714 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 remembered with pride by the later Romans. The known fact that 
 numerous Albans became citizens and even senators at Rome, in- 
 clines us to distrust Liyy's otherwise improbable story of the Alban 
 war, and to believe that, either on the breaking up of Alban society 
 by internal seditions, a powerful Alban party coalesced with the Ro- 
 mans, or that the Alban war is wholly a fiction, as regarded by 
 Niebuhr, who conjectures that the ancient Latins were the enemy 
 that destroyed Alba and possessed her territory. 
 
 10. The name of Tarquin the Elder as fifth king of Rome, a sup- 
 posed prince of Etruscan origin, but of remote Corinthian parentage, 
 brings us to an acquaintance with the Etruscans, then a people evi- 
 dently in the declining stage of their civilization. Before Rome ex- 
 isted as a city, the Etruscan dominion, coeval with the era of Phoe- 
 nicia and of Egypt, appears to have embraced all central Italy. The 
 remains of Etruscan civilization point to an Eastern origin. The 
 Etruscan alphabet was a Greek modification of the Phoenician ; and 
 Herodotus assures us that the Lydians believed the Etruscans to be 
 their kinsmen. But whatever may have been the origin of the 
 Etruscans, and their relations with foreign States, we can have no 
 doubt of their high cultivation. " The internal history of Etruria," 
 says a modern writer , a " is written on the mighty walls of her cities, 
 and on other architectural monuments ; on her roads, her sewers, her 
 tunnels; but, above all, in her sepulchres. It is to be read on 
 graven rocks, and on the painted walls of tombs. But its chief 
 chronicles are inscribed on sarcophagi and cinerary urns, on vases 
 and goblets, on mirrors and other articles of bronze, and a thousand 
 et cetera of personal adornment, and of domestic utensils and weapons 
 of war all found within the tombs of a people long passed away." 
 Although the Etruscan alphabet has been perfectly deciphered, the 
 language is wholly unintelligible to us. 
 
 11. The advance of the Etruscan Tarquin, a foreigner, to the 
 throne, and the great increase of wealth and power observable in his 
 reign, have given rise to the suspicion that Tarquin was, strictly, a 
 conqueror of Rome a circumstance which Roman vanity would have 
 spared no pains to conceal ; but this theory would be a deviation 
 from the outline which the Romans believed ; and there seems no 
 real necessity for adopting it. The supposed murder of the first 
 Tarquin, who had been the patron of the lower classes, is with much 
 plausibility referred to a conspiracy of the patrician nobility to re- 
 
 a. Dennis. Etruria, vol. i. p. 23.
 
 CHAP. VI.] EARLY ROMAN HISTORY. 715 
 
 cover their lost supremacy ; but the accession of Servius defeated 
 their plans. With the latter, constitutional monarchy fell. Tarquiu 
 the Proud, an energetic and politic ruler, appeared to be firmly seat- 
 ed on the throne ; but he had not the affections of the people, and a 
 private crime of one of his sons easily caused his downfall. 
 
 12. The history of Regal Rome gives us only seven kings (three 
 of whom perished by a violent death, and the last of whom was ex- 
 pelled) for a period of two hundred and forty years ; or an average 
 of about thirty-five years to a reign ; whereas fifteen years, or less, 
 to a reign, and a list of at least sixteen kings, would be i more 
 plausible statement. Moreover, the great changes which Rome 
 passed through, from the time of the Sabine conquest to that of the 
 first Tarquin, embracing only three reigns a change from the state 
 of a rude robber tribe to one of so great wealth and advancement in 
 the arts as to lead to the founding of the temple of 'Jupiter on the 
 capitol, and the construction of the famous subterranean drains are 
 alone sufficient to divest the commonly-received chronology of this 
 period of all claims to authenticity. Of the public events themselves, 
 it has been stated by a recent writer, that all we certainly know 
 seems to be comprehended in two sentences : "first, that the Sabine 
 and Roman nobility became effectually blended into one State and 
 one race, with one Sabine religion ; and, secondly, that Rome went 
 on prospering, and acquiring masses of Latin subjects and citizens.''* 
 
 III. 
 
 13. But notwithstanding these strictures, which just criticism 
 compels us to adopt, and although any date that might be assigned 
 
 for the founding of Rome itself would be an arbitrary as- 
 F sumption, it does not alter the fact that Rome had a be- 
 
 CRITICISM, 
 
 ginning that was once known, and that the Palatine hill, 
 where Romulus is fabled to have seen the omen of the twelve 
 vultures, was the site of the original city, as all traditions, and the 
 earliest monuments, agree. Although the story of the Sabine women 
 may be a fiction, it must still be true that the Sabines became, at one 
 time, an element in the population of Rome ; and although we cau- 
 not assert that we have good evidence that the Horatii saved their 
 country, nor that it is certain, with respect to them and the Curiatii, 
 which belonged to Rome and which to Alba, yet we still believe that 
 
 a. Newman's Regal Rome, p. 180.
 
 716 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 the inhabitants of the latter city were in some way incorporated 
 with those of its more powerful rival. 
 
 14. The valor of Horatius Codes, and the fortitude of Mu'tius 
 Scaov' ola the exquisite story of Lucretia the heart-stirring legend 
 of Corioli the virtue of Cincinnatus and the deliverance of Rome 
 by Camil' lus, may all be pure inventions, introduced to adorn the 
 meagre details of history ; yet these and similar beautiful episodes 
 of Livy form the most attractive and captivating parts of early Ro- 
 man history, and, as such, will continue to be read and admired, not- 
 withstanding the distrust that criticism would throw upon them. It 
 is sufficient that they were believed by the Romans themselves, and 
 that the examples of patriotic devotion, individual heroism, and ex- 
 alted virtue, portrayed in them, helped to form the national charac- 
 ter, to make them subjects worthy of our consideration, and to entitle 
 them to a notice in every modern compend of Roman history. 
 
 15. But although Niebuhr and his cotemporaries have overthrown 
 much of the long-accredited early history of Rome, they have built 
 up more than they have destroyed, by establishing on a firm basis 
 many things which the scepticism of others had rejected. Thus, 
 while Ferguson, professing that he could find no firm historic ground 
 until events began to be noted by cotemporary annalists, about the 
 time of the second Punic war, began the details of his Roman his- 
 tory at that period, Niebuhr has clearly shown that even in the 
 annals of the kings all is not fiction, although the chronology is un- 
 certain. The great subterranean drains, or sewers, of Rome, universal- 
 ly attributed to the Tarquins, which, after a lapse of two thousand five 
 hundred years, remain to this day without a stone displaced, still per- 
 forming their destined service, plainly attest the greatness of Rome un- 
 der the kings, for they cannot be referred to a later age. The treaty 
 with Carthage also, in the first year of the republic, which Polybius 
 translated from the original brazen tablets still existing in the capitol 
 in his time, and from a language even then nearly obsolete, but which 
 tablets Livy overlooked or disregarded, further divulges the secret 
 of the early greatness of Rome under the kings, and of her subse- 
 quent fall in the early period of the commonwealth ; a secret which 
 the later Romans were anxious to keep concealed, as if it had been 
 a blot on the honor of their republican ancestors. 
 
 IV. 
 
 16. A clear understanding of the nature of the Roman govern-
 
 CHAP. VI.] EARLY ROMAN HISTORY. 717 
 
 ment, and of the causes of the various changes through which it 
 passed, cannot be obtained without a knowledge of the CONSTITC- 
 materials of early Roman society, as exhibited in the TI NAL HIS- 
 social and political divisions, classes, or orders, of the EARLY 
 people. The origin, character, and mutual relations, of ROME. 
 these several classes, which lie at the basis of the political history of 
 Rome, therefore demand of us, in this place, at least a brief expla- 
 nation. The character of the constitutional history of the early Ro- 
 mans is better known than the times and circumstances of its origin. 
 
 17. Romulus, who was regarded by the Romans as the author of 
 the groundwork of their political constitution, is said to have divided 
 the people into three tribes, called the Ramnenses, Titienses, and 
 Luceres, each of which had, in many particulars, a distinct political 
 and religious organization of its own. The Ramnenses, or people of 
 Romulus, were probably the founders of Rome ; and the Titienses 
 were doubtless the Sabines, who, under their king Titus Tatius, 
 united with the Romans. The origin of the tribe of Luceres is not 
 so clear, but it is generally believed that it was a body of Etruscans 
 who were early admitted into the confederacy, perhaps in the time 
 of the first Tarquin ; as a number of institutions and religious rites 
 of the Romans were evidently of Etruscan origin. Among many 
 ancient nations the practice of dividing a people into several tribes, 
 according to their origin, was common ; and the same custom may 
 be traced among all the great nations of the North American Aborig- 
 ines. 81 * 
 
 18. Besides this division of the early Romans into three tribes, 
 each tribe was divided, for political purposes, into ten curia or 
 classes, thirty in all, and each curia had its separate priest, religious 
 rites, civil duties, and place of assembly. The number of the Roman 
 curiae ever remained the same, while at later periods that of the 
 tribes was greatly increased. Each curia also contained a num- 
 ber of gentes, or houses, which may, not inappropriately, be com- 
 pared to the clans of many ruder nations. It is thought by Niebuhr 
 that there were ten of these clans in each curia, and therefore three 
 hundred in the whole Roman State. Originally each of these houses 
 or clans was probably made up of families united by ties of consan- 
 
 a. The Huron, the Iroquois, and the Delaware tribes, were each divided into three clans ; the 
 Sioux into two ; the Shawnees into four ; and the Chippewas into a larger number. An im- 
 portant regulation of these divisions was that no man could marry in Ai* own clan, and that 
 every child belonged to the clan of its mother ; the undoubted object of which was to check 
 a natural tendency towards a subdivision of tfie nation into independent communities
 
 718 . PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 guinity, but in process of time artificial bonds appear to have suc- 
 ceeded to those of family relationship, and families of strangers be- 
 came united, under a common name, in the same clan or brother- 
 hood : thus we find that the Cornelian gens, or clan, contained the 
 Scipios and the Syllas. 
 
 19. These gentes, families, or clans, whatever may have been their 
 number, which made up the thirty curias or classes, were the original 
 citizens of Rome, that is, the patricians, in whom all political rights 
 were originally vested. But to the families which composed each 
 clan there was attached, from the earliest period of Roman history, 
 a class of dependents called clients, who are supposed to have been 
 the original inhabitants of the country, reduced by the Romans to a 
 kind of feudatory subjection, somewhat like the vassalage of the 
 Saxon serfs under their Norman conquerors, but still retaining some 
 rights of citizenship, as we find they had votes in the comitia of the 
 centuries, even before the decemvirate. The person to whom a client 
 was attached was denominated the patron of the latter, and the re- 
 lation existing between them, and which descended from father to 
 son, was deemed one of peculiar sanctity, involving hereditary rights 
 and duties of a highly important character. Paternal instruction 
 and advice, and protection, both in public and private affairs, were 
 sacred duties of a patron to his clients ; and the latter, in return, 
 were bound to be dutiful and obedient to their patrons, to promote 
 their honor, to help defray their taxes, to accompany them in war, 
 and $o pay their ransom if they should fall into the hands of the 
 enemy. The relation of clientship was wholly of a private nature, 
 and was regulated by the ecclesiastical, and not by the civil law. The 
 clients were subject to their patrons, and not to the State, and they 
 can scarcely be said to have formed any part of the body politic. 
 Slaves were a class differing widely from the clients, embracing such 
 as had been reduced to servitude by being taken in war with arms in 
 their hands, or who had been purchased from foreign countries. 
 
 20. It remains to give an account of the origin and character of 
 the plebeians the commonalty of Rome. This was a population 
 which grew up after the first establishment of the government, and 
 the division into tribes, curias, and gentes. Occasionally the bondage 
 of slaves expired, or they were emancipated, with their owner's con- 
 sent, or by extinction of his family, and then they remained subject to 
 the laws as freemen, but possessed no political privileges. Such was 
 the situation of strangers also, who came to reside in the land ; and
 
 CHAP. VI] EARLY ROMAN HISTORY. 719 
 
 also of the inhabitants of neighboring conquered districts, who be- 
 came subject to the Roman laws without obtaining the franchises of 
 Roman citizens. The freemen thus incorporated with the State con- 
 stituted the Roman commonalty. This inferior population embraced 
 all classes, high and low, rich and poor, in the conquered districts, 
 and beyond the limits of the city of Rome had their own municipal 
 regulations, and, as freemen, fought in the armies of what was now 
 their common country. But in early times they could not vote, nor 
 exercise any political rights whatever, nor take any part in the gov- 
 ernment, for they belonged to no patrician gens or family, nor could 
 they intermarry with one, they belonged to no curia nor tribe, and 
 thus forming no part of the body politic, could not be deemed 
 citizens. 8 - It was the struggle of this body, first for protection, and 
 the rights of citizenship, and next for political power in the admin- 
 istration of the government, that so often shook Rome to its founda- 
 tions, but which still preserved the republic, during the long period 
 of the commonwealth, against the ascendency of a hateful oligarchy. 
 Such were the several classes which formed the early population of 
 Rome. The distinctions between them are highly important to a 
 right view of the constitution, of the successive changes, and of the 
 long-continued struggle between the Patrician and Plebeian orders. 
 
 21. At the time of the supposed organization of the Roman gov- 
 ernment under Romulus, the whole Roman people appear to have 
 been included in the tribe of the Ramnenses, from whose ten curise 
 or classes a senate of one hundred members was chosen, which was 
 the supreme legislative council of the nation. But when the Sabines 
 united with the Romans, forming the second tribe, called the Titienses, 
 the senate was increased to two hundred, and, not long after the 
 Luceres had been added, the senatorial body was enlarged to three 
 hundred, at which number it remained unaltered for many centuries. 
 The Luceres, who were called the Lesser Families of the State, in 
 distinction from those of the other two tribes, who were called the 
 Greater Families, were long held in some degree of subserviency to 
 their elder brethren. The Roman senate, whose number, it is sup- 
 posed, originally corresponded with the number of gentes or fami- 
 lies in the thirty curise, was not an arbitrary institution of the first 
 
 a. By most writers the clients have been confounded with the plebeians. (See works on 
 Roman Antiquities, &c.) Niebuhr says that even Dionysius "was led astray by the delusion 
 that the clients and plebeians were the same body." (See Niebuhr, i. 280 ; also Arnold's 
 Rome, i. 32.) Nevertheless, Newman, (Regal Rome, p. 81,) says a large part of the plebeians 
 " were related, as clients, to particular patrician families."
 
 720 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 kings, for a similar council was found in all the independent cities 
 of civilized nations on the coasts of the Mediterranean. It is more 
 probable that the heads of the families, or clans, which united to form 
 the early Roman State, chose one from their number to preside over 
 their council, or to execute its decrees, and that the king was the 
 creature of this senate of elders. The senate was a deliberative and 
 advisory assembly, convened by the king, who brought before it the 
 subjects for discussion, and who might elect into its body whom- 
 soever he pleased, although it was required that an equal number of 
 senators should be taken from each tribe. 
 
 22. The general assembly of the thirty curias, (comitia curiata,) 
 called in early times the assembly of the people, although it did not 
 embrace the plebeians, was also an important branch of the govern- 
 ment, in some respects superior even to the senate. In its organization 
 the aristocratic principle prevailed. The votes in each curia appear 
 to have been taken by families, and not by individuals, 11 and when 
 the opinion of each curia had been ascertained by the majority of 
 votes in it, its individual vote was given in the general assembly of 
 all the curias. It was the general assembly of the curiae that elected 
 the king, and although, beyond this, the assembly could not originate 
 any measure whatever, yet in the acceptance or rejection of laws its 
 decision was final. 
 
 23. The government of early Rome was strictly a limited and 
 elective monarchy, but the power of the king was as varied and ill- 
 defined as in the feudal monarchies of the middle ages. While the 
 king was the highest magistrate, the absolute commander in war, the 
 chief judge, and high priest, of the nation, he shared the govern- 
 ment with the senate, and the general assembly of the curiae ; over 
 the plebeians or commons only, who were not at this early period 
 deemed citizens, his power was absolute ; but every citizen, that is, 
 every person belonging to a patrician family, might appeal from the 
 king, or his judges, to the sentence of his peers. The revenues of 
 the king were derived from his share of the public land, and from 
 his portion of the booty taken in war. 
 
 24. The early Romans were a military community, and as their 
 territory became enlarged by the conquest of the surrounding people, 
 the proportionate numbers of the plebeian class increased, for con- 
 quest did not add to the citizens of the State. The first successful 
 attempt to invest the plebeian part of the population with any share 
 
 a. Niebuhr, i. 169-170. Contra, Schmitz Rome, p. 62.
 
 CHAP. VI.] EARLY ROMAN HISTORY. 721 
 
 in political rights, was attributed by the Romans themselves to their 
 sixth king, Servius Tullius ; and there can be no doubt that the 
 changes in the constitution attributed to him, rest on a historical 
 basis, although it may not be so certain that Servius was the author 
 of them. It is -related that Servius, although acknowledged king by 
 the senate, was unwelcome to the assembly of the curiae, and that in 
 order to maintain his power he sought to create a new order of citi- 
 zens out of the large mass of inhabitants of Rome who as yet had 
 no political existence, although they were freemen, and, in many in- 
 stances, wealthy, and of noble origin. Servius first divided the 
 plebeians, or commons, into thirty tribes, classing them in local di- 
 visions, and allowing them assemblies, (comitia tributa,} and officers, 
 for the settlement of their own aifairs, similar to those of the curif-e 
 
 25. Still the curias, regarding themselves as forming, exclusively, 
 the Roman people, were not willing to concede any of the higher 
 political rights to the new order ; but the numbers of the latter en- 
 abled Servius to attain the end sought by other means, and to give 
 to the plebeians a decided preponderance in the general military 
 assembly of the nation, by new divisions which he made, and by 
 which he rendered the military services of the commons more import- 
 ant than those of the patricians. In the relation of soldiers, ar- 
 rayed in the same army, and fighting under the same standard, both 
 classes could feel that they belonged to one common country ; and 
 the dangers of war would be likely to soften, at least, those preju- 
 dices which had raised so strong a barrier between them. a 
 
 26. In the new military organization of the people, Servius divided 
 the whole population into one hundred and ninety-three centuries, 
 the first eighteen of which, called equestrian centuries, were to furnish 
 the cavalry force in war, and the remainder the infantry, and in the 
 great assembly of the centuries, (comitia centuriata,) each division 
 had one vote. Here patricians and plebeians met on a footing 
 of equality, being embraced in the same century when their property 
 qualifications were equal. To the assembly of the centuries Servius 
 transferred, from that of the curiae, the election of the higher magis- 
 trates, the decision upon peace and war, and upon legislative meas- 
 ures which originated in the senate, while to the assembly of the 
 
 a. " For he to-day who sheds his blood with me 
 Shall be my brother : be he ne'er so vile, 
 This day shall better his condition." 
 
 SHAKSPEARE. Henry V. 
 
 46
 
 722 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 eurise was given the power of sanctioning or rejecting the measures 
 which had been passed by the centuries. But the institutions attrib- 
 uted to Servius were never firmly established, owing to the tyranny 
 of his successor ; yet they contained the germs of the future equality 
 between the patricians and plebeians, and were long after referred to 
 by the latter as an exposition of their manifest rights. 
 
 V. 
 
 27. Immediately after the downfall of royalty, the commons, court- 
 ed by those patrician families that had united against Tarquin, shared 
 
 in the advantages of the revolution, and regained some 
 
 PI EBEIAN" 
 
 AND ' of the rights of which the last king had deprived them ; 
 PATRICIAN b u t within a few years they were reduced to such pov- 
 erty, and general distress, by the disasters of war, and 
 the oppressions of the patricians, that they were almost ready to 
 forego the exercise of all political rights, if they could merely obtain 
 protection from personal injuries. Their general poverty deprived 
 them of their former power in the assembly of the centuries ; the 
 curige acquired the supreme control ; and the government gradually 
 centered more and more in the hands of the patricians, and ere long 
 became, instead of a free commonwealth, an exclusive and tyrannical 
 aristocracy. 
 
 28. It was in this situation of affairs, fifteen years after the ex- 
 pulsion of the Tarquins, that the commons, driven to despair by 
 their sufferings, and resolving to endure their degraded "state no 
 longer, sought relief by withdrawing from Rome, with the intention 
 of forming a new city of their own. But the patricians, like the 
 Egyptians in a similar case, were unwilling to let the people go, and, 
 by complying with their very limited demands, induced them to re- 
 turn, and thus prevented the dissolution of the Roman nation. As 
 there were two chief officers of the patricians, called consuls, so the 
 plebeians were henceforth to be allowed two officers, soon after in- 
 creased to five, called tribunes, who were to watch over the interests 
 of the commonalty, with power to protect its members, both indi- 
 vidually and collectively, against every aggression upon their rights. 
 Through these organs the people could make themselves heard and 
 respected, and thus they acquired the first element of freedom, and 
 began to look forward to the time when they might share with the 
 patricians in all the benefits and honors of their common country. 
 
 29. After the description that we have given of the tribes and
 
 CHAP. VI] EARLY ROMAN HISTORY. 723 
 
 classes int:> which the Roman population was divided, the true char- 
 acter of the government will be easily understood, and the struggles 
 between the patrician and plebeian orders, as described in the first 
 chapter of Roman history, will be better appreciated. It would be 
 needless to detail here those struggles, and their results, anew. Suf- 
 fice it to say, that, at the period of the conquest of Greece and the 
 fall of Carthage, many patrician families had become extinct, and the 
 old patrician ascendency had passed away, while a new aristocracy 
 of distinguished plebeian families had not only grown into power, but 
 had become as exclusive and as oppressive to the poorer classes as 
 the power which it had in part supplanted. The distinctions between 
 patricians and plebeians had ceased to be of any political import- 
 ance. In the senate the plebeians far exceeded the patricians ; and 
 the tribuneship had so entirely changed its original character that 
 the tribunes, instead of being merely the protectors of the oppressed 
 of the commonalty, wielded a power even greater than that of the 
 consuls. 
 
 30. As an evidence that the constitution had now attained its com- 
 plete development, we observe afterwards, during the existence of 
 the republic, neither the springing up of any new powers, nor the 
 creation of any new branches of government ; but all legislative en- 
 actments henceforth become disciplinary, sanatory, or restrictive, in 
 their character, designed to regulate the workings of the system that 
 had already been perfected. As the government was republican, the 
 healthful workings of the constitution depended, indeed, upon the 
 virtue, intelligence, and patriotism of the citizens ; but it must be 
 borne in mind that the Roman constitution was framed for a single 
 city, that all the powers of government were centered in Rome 
 itself, and that the numerous provinces, States, and cities, over which 
 the Roman dominion extended, stood to Rome in the relation of 
 subjects to their sovereign. So long, therefore, as the Roman seriate 
 remained true to the trust reposed in it, it mattered less what was 
 the moral and intellectual condition of the people, than under a pure 
 democracy, where every freeman helps to give character to the gov- 
 ernment of which he forms a part. It was only while the city of 
 Rome retained its republican virtues that there could be any guar- 
 antee for the perpetuity of the constitution 
 
 VI. 
 
 31. The religious notions of the Romans were very similar to
 
 724 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 those of the Grecians, from whom they were, evidently, in great part 
 borrowed. Even before the founding of Home the 
 1 Grecian mythology appears to have gained a footing 
 among the Etruscans, who were, perhaps, like the Greeks, 
 of Pelasgic origin. Not only were the same deities venerated by the 
 Greeks and the Romans, but both people connected similar mythical 
 legends with the histories of their gods. It is believed that the 
 science of the Roman augurs and haruspices, whose business it was 
 to pierce into the future, and reveal the will of the gods, by the ex- 
 planation of signs, omens, and prodigies, was derived from the 
 Etruscans ; and that from the same source came that belief in the 
 punishment of the wicked after death, to which Polybius ascribes so 
 strong a moral influence over the minds of the Romans, even in his 
 own days. a 
 
 32. The Roman ceremonial law, whose origin is attributed to the 
 virtuous Numa, formed perhaps a less complicated system than the 
 Grecian ; nor had the Romans any oracles, like those of Dodona and 
 Delphos, which exerted so great an influence over the public life of 
 the Grecians. The Roman priesthood never formed an order dis- 
 tinct from the other citizens, but the priests were usually chosen 
 from the most honorable men of the State, and often held their 
 offices for stated periods only, although the high priest, (pontifex 
 maximus) who was the supreme judge and arbiter in all religious 
 matters, was chosen for life. The religion of the Romans, like that 
 of the Greeks, was paganism, in its most extensive application ; but 
 idolatry, or the worship of idols or images, can hardly be said to 
 have formed a part of it ; and it was not until long after the reign 
 of Numa, the founder of the Roman religion, that any images of the 
 gods were seen in Rome. Although the auspices continued to be 
 consulted down to a period later than the Christian era, yet even in 
 the times of the Punic wars many persons regarded them as mere 
 forms ; and in the days of Cicero the ceremonies of religion were 
 generally viewed with indifference, and sometimes treated with 
 
 ridicule. 
 
 VII. 
 
 33. Of the modes of living, social condition, and arts of the Ro- 
 mans under the kings, nearly all that we profess to know is gathered, 
 like the civil and political history of the same period, from tra- 
 ditionary legends. If the accounts that are given of the laws and in- 
 
 a. Arnold's Rome, i. 51.
 
 CHAP. VI.] EARLY ROMAN HISTORY. 725 
 
 stitutions of Servius, and the numbers of the population, are to be- 
 iioDE OF lieved, the Romans had already become changed, under 
 LIVING, their sixth king, from a rude shepherd tribe, to an 
 
 SOCIAL 
 
 CONDITION, agricultural people ; and at the time of the treaty with 
 * c - Carthage, in the first year of the republic, they appear 
 to have been engaged in active foreign trade with Sicily, Sardinia, 
 and the northern coast of Africa. As in Judea under the reign of 
 Solomon, so it is probable that in Rome foreign commerce was con- 
 ducted principally by the government for its own benefit ; and that 
 while it was partially open to the patricians, agriculture and the 
 handicraft trades formed the principal occupation of the plebeian 
 orders. In later times, however, no occupation was deemed by the 
 Romans more honorable than agriculture, and the highest praise 
 that could be bestowed upon a man was, that he was a good husband- 
 man and father. 
 
 34. The domestic life of the early Romans, before the introduction 
 of foreign luxuries had corrupted the tastes and morals of the people, 
 was of the simplest kind, greatly resembling that which prevailed in 
 Europe during the early part of the Middle Ages. Thus, the virtues of 
 the chaste Lucretia, who was the wife of a Roman nobleman, and who 
 was found spinning with her maidens, are represented by Livy as con- 
 sisting in her domestic and industrious habits, while the idle and 
 luxurious life of others is mentioned with disapprobation. But the 
 rudeness of the age is shown in the circumstance that the usages of 
 the Romans paid but little respect to women, who, by the old Roman 
 law, at all times of their lives, and under all circumstances, were 
 obliged to be under guardianship, and, without their guardian's sanc- 
 tion, could contract no obligation of legal validity. The power of a 
 father over his children was almost unlimited, for not only might he 
 scourge and imprison them at will, and reduce them to slavery, but, 
 in certain cases, put them to death by any punishment he chose. 
 
 35. Among the early Romans, and throughout middle Italy, cattle, 
 and masses of copper, appear to have been the common medium of 
 exchange, the copper being rendered more fusible by an admixture 
 of zinc or tin. The first coinage is attributed to Servius Tullius, 
 who is said to have stamped the rude copper, in lumps of about a 
 pound weight, with the figure of some animal. Silver coins were 
 first issued at Rome in the third century before Christ. In the times 
 of the kings, copper, or brass, appears to have been procurable at a 
 lower rate than iron, as not only shields, but the better household
 
 726 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAET IIL 
 
 utensils were made of it, and it was not until the time of the Gallic 
 invasion that the increased value of copper had caused iron to be 
 generally introduced for military purposes. That artistic genius 
 which distinguished the early Greeks was wanting in the Roman 
 character ; and the works of art, whether of architecture or sculpture, 
 executed under the later kings, are attributed to the Etruscans, who 
 were the early instructors of their future conquerors. 
 
 36. The language of Rome under the kings, a few specimens of 
 which have been preserved, required to be interpreted to the Romans 
 of Cicero's time, and the meaning of many words had even then been 
 wholly lost. At the beginning of the commonwealth, which was long 
 after the times of Hesiod and Homer, and twenty years before the 
 battle of Marathon, when the age of Greek heroic poetry was long 
 since past, there had not appeared in Rome a single writer, whether 
 poet or historian, whose name has been preserved to us. As yet 
 Roman literature had not a beginning, and its origin is attributed to 
 early intercourse with the Greeks, long, however, before the Grecian 
 conquest. Soon after the first Punic war the forms of Grecian 
 poetry were imitated in the Latin language, and the first cotemporary 
 history written by a Roman was that of the first Punic war, in a 
 metrical form, by Nsevius, from whom Virgil is said to have borrowed 
 the plan of the first books of the ^Eneid ; and immediately after this 
 there were several Romans who wrote the history of their country in 
 the Greek language ; but it was not until Grecian literature was fast 
 dying away that the Roman began to thrive with vigor. It was but 
 a short time before the conquest of Greece and the fall of Carthage 
 that Roman historians began to write the history of their country in 
 Latin prose ; and among the first, and the most important of these 
 writers, was Cato the Elder, who was the first author that attempted 
 to fix the era of the founding of Rome.
 
 CHAP. VII.] THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 727 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE SECOND PERIOD OF ROMAN HISTORY : EXTENDING 
 
 FROM THE CONQUESTS OF GREECE AND CARTHAGE 
 
 TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. Character of the First Period of Roman History. POLITICAL CHARACTER 
 OF THE CLOSING PERI8D OF THE REPUBLIC. 2. Character of the events known as the " Dis- 
 sensions of the Gracchi." Increasing political power of the wealthy. 3. Effects of the wealth 
 flowing in from the conquered provinces. The collectors of taxes. General political corrup- 
 tion. 4. The elections in the times of Marius, and Sylla, &c. Growing degeneracy of the con- 
 suls, tribunes, and senate. 5. The downward tendency arrested by the Empire. 
 
 6. MORAL AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE. General demoralization in the times of 
 the civil wars. Depravity of the city populace. 7. Changes observable in the country. Neglect 
 of Agriculture. Public donations to the poor. 
 
 8. RQ.MAN LITERATURE. The Golden Age of Roman Literature. General prevalence of the 
 Latin language. Grecian teachers. Philosophy. 9. Cicero's influence. Obstacles to the culti- 
 vation of oratory. Historians. Poets. Character of Roman poetry, and of Roman literature 
 generally. 
 
 10. THE ARTS. Public buildings, architecture, &c. 11. No superior native artists. Passion 
 for works of art. Roman amateurs, &c. 
 
 12. Other nations during the closing period of the Roman Republic. History of Judea. 
 The birth of the Saviour. 13. THK HISTORICAL PROPHECIES. 14. Early prophetic declarations. 
 15. The most important of these. Nebuchadnezzar's dreams, and Daniel's visions. Their in- 
 terpretation. 15. The First Kingdom : the Babylonian. 17. The Second Kingdom .-the Medo- 
 Peisian. 18. The Third Kingdom : the Macedo-Grecian. 19. The Fourth Kin gdom : the 
 Roman Dominion. 10. The Fifth. Kingdom : the Kingdom of the Most High. 21. Supposed 
 prophetic references to Papal Rome. 22. Prophecies relating to the Jews. The Reformation. 
 23. The eleventh chapter of Daniel. Bishop Newton and Dr. Hales. 24. Prophecies relating 
 to the Messiah. 25. Magnitude and importance of the subject of the Prophecies. 
 
 I. 
 
 1. The first period of Roman history is marked by a long-continued 
 and eventually successful struggle of the plebeian commonalty, against 
 a patrician aristocracy, for protection, prerogative, and power ; a 
 struggle in which the Roman people were divided by supposed dis- 
 tinctions of birth, and in which separate orders of men contended for 
 general principles, but with little partiality for individual interests, 
 or iealousy of personal distinctions. The second period 
 
 J . . POLITICAL 
 
 of Roman history, extending from the conquests of CHARACTER 
 Greece and Carthage to the Christian era, is marked by OF THE 
 
 - . i i i i i CLOSING 
 
 the appearance of new parties, which take the place oi PERIOD 
 
 the old ones, in which the old distinctions founded on OF THE 
 
 ,..,,. i . , /. REPUBLIC. 
 
 pretensions of birth disappear, and an aristocracy or 
 
 wealth gathers to itself all the honors and emoluments of offic,
 
 728 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 giving rise to the contests of individuals for power, and the formation 
 of separate political factions, and leading, eventually, to the establish- 
 ment of a monarchy on the ruins of the republic. 
 
 2. The revolution by which the constitution of the republic was 
 overthrown, received its first development in the failure of the noble 
 attempt of the Gracchi to restore to society a middle class of citizens 
 which might serve as an adjusting balance to the evils arising from 
 the usurpations of the rich, and the growing debasement and venality 
 of the poor. The failure of that attempt widened the breach between 
 the two classes, although as yet the people scarcely perceived that 
 two classes existed, as by the various mutations of wealth the citi- 
 zens were constantly passing from one to the other. Yet in the 
 latter period of the republic few but the wealthy, or those befriended 
 by them, could rise to political distinction, because few others could 
 command the influence of those who directed the suffrages of the 
 populace. 
 
 3. The immense wealth that flowed in from the conquered prov- 
 inces became, in its collection and disbursement, a powerful engine 
 of corruption. Cicero, in his orations against Verres, the praetorian 
 governor of Sicily, draws a faithful picture of what most of the 
 governors of provinces were in his time ; and he asserts that the rob- 
 bery, plunder, and extortion of which they were guilty, and which 
 were often connived at by their superiors, were more desolating in 
 their effects than the march of a conquering army. As there was a 
 host of officers required to collect the tribute of the conquered prov- 
 inces, which was let out to the highest bidders, and as great fortunes 
 were often made by the cruelty, oppression, and fraud, of the collect- 
 ors, such offices were eagerly coveted, and were bestowed as the re- 
 wards of political patronage. Hence the most influential and ener- 
 getic among the poor, who aspired to become leaders, looked for 
 escape from immediate evils to the possibility of sudden acquisitions 
 of wealth by the attainment of a subordinate post in the government 
 of some petty province or city, instead of directing their efforts to 
 reform the laws and correct the perversions of justice ; while the 
 mass of the populace was led away by the allurements held out by 
 factious demagogues, who first labored to corrupt those whom they 
 meant afterwards to enslave. 
 
 4. In the times of Marius, and Sylla, Cassar, Crassus, and Pompey, 
 the elections, which were often scenes of tumult and riot, were carried 
 by open and undisguised bribery : in the public assemblies free dis
 
 ' CHAP. VII.] THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 729 
 
 cussion gave place to violence : the tribunes, elected originally as the 
 guardians of. the people's rights, losing all zeal for the public good 
 in the strife for personal aggrandizement, either became the leaders 
 of factions, or sold their influence to those who could pay them the 
 highest : the consulship became the reward 6f military usurpers ; 
 and even the senate, once so dignified and virtuous as to be regarded 
 by the people with almost sacred awe, sunk low in political and moral 
 debasement by its servile dependence upon the will of the popular 
 leaders. 
 
 5. In this state of general corruption and degeneracy, while the 
 victorious arms of the republic were rapidly extending the limits of 
 the Roman dominion, Rome herself, a prey to intrigue and faction, 
 was fast losing the power to control the mighty empire which she had 
 gathered around her ; and the republic was already breaking to pieces, 
 when the downward tendency of affairs was arrested by the only 
 remedy that could save degenerate Rome the triumph of one of 
 her military leaders over all his competitors, and the placing of su- 
 preme power in the hands of one individual. It was then that civil 
 strife was hushed, peace restored, and the bonds of union renewed, 
 under the sovereignty of Augustus. A monarchy was the greatest 
 boon that Heaven could bestow upon the Roman people, as it was 
 the only one which, in their degeneracy, they were fitted to -enjoy. 
 
 II. 
 
 6. The foregoing sketch of the political- character of the Roman 
 people in the last days of the republic, will convey some idea of their 
 moral and social condition during the same period. Gen- 
 
 ..... ... , , MORAL AND 
 
 eral political corruption is inseparably connected with SO CIAL CON- 
 general depravity in private life ; and accordingly we DITION F 
 find that the people who tolerated the butcheries of 
 Marius and Sylla, and the proscriptions of Antony, Lepidus, and 
 Octavius, were sunk in demoralization to an extreme degree. In 
 the city of Rome, which had no efficient police until the time of 
 Augustus, the regulations that were made to preserve the public 
 safety and decency were violated with impunity ; robbery, murder, 
 perjury, forgery, and like crimes, were of every-day occurrence ; a 
 general licentiousness prevailed ; the Roman nobles, avaricious and 
 effeminate, and immersed in luxuries and sensual pleasures, gave 
 themselves little concern about the public welfare so long as they 
 could purchase security for the enjoyment of the fruit of their ex-
 
 730 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAHT IIL 
 
 tortions, while an ignorant and depraved populace was easily con- 
 verted by its leaders, the hirelings of reckless aspirants to power, 
 into ready instruments of violence and bloodshed. 
 
 7. Passing from the city to the country, we find that the numerous 
 small but thrifty farmers of a former period had given place to large 
 landed proprietors, whose estates were for the most part used as 
 pastures, and tended by gangs of slaves. The late wars had reduced 
 large districts almost to a wilderness state ; and agriculture, once 
 the pride and glory of the Roman people, had become so neglected 
 that Italy, one of the most .fertile countries of Europe, was depend- 
 ent upon neighboring States, or on its provinces, for its annual sup- 
 plies of corn. Donations of corn and meat were often made to the 
 poor of the cities, and of Rome in particular, from the public treas- 
 ury ; and sometimes these were given by wealthy private individuals, 
 who added free theatrical representations, games, and amusements, 
 as the readiest mode of courting the favor of the populace. 
 
 III. 
 
 8. In literature and the arts the Romans had made considerable 
 
 progress since the conquest of Greece, but they seldom 
 a05 f^!L^ equalled the Grecian models, from which they almost 
 
 LITERATURE* * 
 
 universally copied ; and, moreover, Roman literature, a 
 plant of hot-bed culture rather than of natural growth, quickly 
 reached its maturity, and was of correspondingly short duration. 
 The golden age of Roman literature was embraced within a period 
 of less than a single century from the death of Sylla to that of 
 Augustus. At this time the Latin language was understood, and 
 generally spoken, throughout Italy and the neighboring islands, in 
 most of Spain and in the south of Gaul, countries that derived their 
 civilization from the Romans ; but the language of the eastern provin- 
 cials, in Greece and Asia, was never supplanted by it, although, through- 
 out the Roman dominions, persons of rank and education thought it 
 necessary to become acquainted with the Latin. On the other hand, 
 Rome itself swarmed with Greek rhetoricians and philosophers, who 
 gave instruction in the schools in their native tongue, while the sons 
 of many of the Roman nobility were sent to Athens to complete their 
 education under the ablest Grecian teachers. There were no distinct 
 schools of philosophy peculiar to the Romans, nor was philosophy 
 with them a favorite study until the time of Cicero, who first made his 
 countrymen acquainted with the speculations of the Grecian sages.
 
 CHAP. VII.] THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 731 
 
 9. Cicero, whose orations are the most perfect specimens of Latin 
 prose composition extant, did more than any other man to bring the 
 language to its perfection, and his younger cotemporaries who grew 
 up around him received the stamp of his genius. But as oratory is 
 best cultivated by free public speaking in popular assemblages, so 
 when the Roman forum became silent, and political assemblages of 
 the people were discouraged under the emperors, oratory lost its in- 
 fluence, and was neglected, and written prose composition declined 
 with it. Among the historians of this age, the most prominent are 
 Caesar, who wrote Commentaries on his Gallic wars ; Sallust, who 
 wrote an account of the conspiracy of Catiline, and a history of the 
 Jugurthine war ; and Livy, the author of a voluminous history of 
 his eountry, and who enjoys the reputation of being the greatest of 
 Roman historians. Among poets, may be mentioned the names of 
 Catullus, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, who form a brilliant galaxy 
 of poetic genius, and all of whom lived in the century immediately 
 preceding the Christian era ; but still their poetry is an imitation of the 
 Greek, and in great part a translation of the Greek forms into Latin. 
 On the whole, Roman literature bears throughout the clearest eri- 
 dence of having been formed on Grecian models, except in the single 
 department of prose composition as applied to oratory, in which 
 Cicero shines as the greatest master the world has ever seen. 
 
 IV. 
 
 10. The public buildings of the Romans in the last age of the re- 
 public began to exhibit the influences of Grecian taste and art, which, 
 however, were greatly extended under the reign of 
 Augustus ; and it was not altogether a vain boast of that 
 monarch that he found Rome a city of bricks, and left it a city of 
 marble. Augustus was the first who introduced among the Romans 
 the use of marble in building ; yet but few remains of the edifices of 
 his time exist, and the architectural works for which Rome is so justly 
 celebrated belong mostly to the first century after Christ, an era more 
 than five hundred years later than the Grecian age of Pericles. 
 
 11. In the time of the republic, Rome produced no native artists 
 of eminence, yet after the eastern conquests in Greece, Asia Minor, 
 Syria, and Egypt, such a passion for works of art prevailed among 
 the Romans as to lead to the most disgraceful robberies of statues, 
 paintings, vases, and other movable articles of ornament, which were 
 conveyed to Italy in great numbers ; and not only were the public
 
 732 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 places of Rome adorned with these plundered treasures, but the 
 private dwellings of the great, also, were lavishly stocked with them. 
 There were many Roman amateurs, but few artists ; and as the arts 
 that were prized most highly were of foreign origin, introduced when 
 already in their perfection, and cultivated by the wealthy few for 
 ostentation and display, they produced none of their legitimate re- 
 fining and ennobling 'effects upon the mind, and exerted little or no 
 influence in checking the growing degeneracy of the people. 
 
 V. 
 
 ***** 12. Turning from Roman history to seek after 
 the cotemporary history of other nations during the closing period 
 of the republic, we find but little to reward our researches, for, at 
 the close of that period, nearly all the nations of the known world 
 were embraced within the Roman dominion, and their separate an- 
 nals, immediately previous to the events which led to their subjugation, 
 are little known, and their history afterwards, as Roman provinces, 
 is of little importance. Of all the States of the East, to Judea 
 alone, whose history we have traced, briefly, down to the time when 
 the Romans began to interfere in the national councils, we still turn 
 with interest, for in Judea that important event occurred the ap- 
 pearance of the long-promised Messiah, which marks the transition 
 from the history of ancient to that of modern times from the pagan 
 to the Christian world. Of the vast influences of that event upon 
 man's moral and intellectual being as a member of society we have 
 not room here to speak, but those who recognize in it that divine 
 agency which all Christendom, as distinguished from Judaism and 
 Paganism, attributes to it, cannot fail to admit, in its widest accepta- 
 tion, that God governs the affairs of inen. 
 
 13. Connected with the subject of God's overruling agency, and 
 THE the establishment of his spiritual kingdom on the earth 
 
 HisxoaicAL through the mediation of his son the Saviour, the Prince 
 PROPHECIES. Q p eace; there is a portion of history of exceeding interest 
 to the Christian student, which cannot be gathered from the pages 
 of profane writers alone. We allude to the historical prophecies 
 contained in the Old Testament, a subject of historical importance 
 that cannot in justice be passed over, but which we have omitted to 
 the present time, that we might present a connected, though brief, 
 view of it here. 
 
 14. As far back as the days of the Jewish patriarchs, the dawn of
 
 CHAP. TIL] HISTORICAL PROPHECIES. 733 
 
 Christendom was announced, in the promise of the Messiah ; and 
 almost before the authentic annals of profane history have a begin- 
 ning, the Almighty had opened, in prophetic visions, to his servants, 
 a view of the future, and shown them the rise, progress, decay, and 
 dissolution, of the mighty kingdoms of the heathen world that were 
 to fill the earth, successively, with their renown, and then pass away 
 and give place to the kingdom of the Most High, that was to em- 
 brace the whole earth within its dominion. It cannot be other than 
 a. study of deep interest to the candid inquirer after truth, to exam- 
 ine the prophecies which disclose such important events, known to 
 God alone, and to trace out their remarkable fulfilment as recorded 
 on the pages of history. 
 
 15. Among the most important of these prophetic declarations 
 are those of the prophet Daniel, one of the Jews whom Nebuchad- 
 nezzar carried away captive to Babylon nearly six hundred years 
 before the Christian era. They are embraced, mostly, in the inter 
 pretation of the famous dream of Nebuchadnezzar, and in four cor- 
 responding visions of the prophet, all of which are designed to illus- 
 trate and explain the same events. Nebuchadnezzar, in his dream, saw 
 a compound image of gold, silver, brass, and iron, which the prophet 
 Daniel, professing to speak from inspiration of the Most High, in- 
 terprets to denote four successive kingdoms of the earth, whose un- 
 expircd history he gives in considerable detail ; and in the first 
 vision of Daniel the same four kingdoms are represented by four wild 
 beasts rising from the sea, (Dan. ii. and vii. 2, 3.) Let us examine 
 the dream and the visions, and see if history verifies the interpreta- 
 tion thereof. 
 
 1 6. THE FIRST KINGDOM. The head of the compound image which 
 Nebuchadnezzar saw was of gold, and Daniel declared that this head 
 of gold represented " the first kingdom, or that of the Babylonians" 
 of which Nebuchadnezzar was then monarch. In the first vision of the 
 prophet the sam6 kingdom is represented by " the first beast, which 
 resembled a lion with eagle's wings," expressing the fierceness and 
 rapidity of Nebuchadnezzar, the founder of the Babylonian empire. 
 Jeremiah had before represented him as a " lion from the north, that 
 should make Judea desolate," ( Jer. iv. 6, 7,) and as " an eagle spread- 
 ing his wings of destruction over Moab ;" (Jer. xlviii. 40 ;) and 
 Ezekiel as a " great eagle, long winged, and full of feathers," (Ezek. 
 xvii. 3 and 12;) but at the time of Daniel's vision " its wings were 
 plucked," for its career was checked by the victorious arms and en-
 
 734 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAET III 
 
 croachmcnts of Cyrus the Persian. It might be alleged that this 
 interpretation of the " head of gold," as being symbolical of a king- 
 dom already in existence, is not prophetic. Viewed as standing 
 alone it might not be deemed so, except as it is supported by the 
 prophecies of previous writers ; but it is the first in the series of the 
 four prophetic kingdoms, and therefore an important link in the 
 chain of testimony. The first kingdom found mankind in no state 
 of cohesion a vast number of petty tribes bound together by no ties 
 of national affinity, religion, language, or manners and in proportion 
 to its extension, its intensity was weakened, and felt only around ^he 
 person of the monarch. Having the imperfections of an elementary 
 state of civilization, and of a first experiment, and being corrupted 
 by the vices of luxurious effeminacy, it fell an easy prey to the then 
 hardy and enterprising Persians. 
 
 17. THE SECOND KINGDOM. In the interpretation of the dream 
 of Nebuchadnezzar, the prophet declared that after the first king, 
 (or kingdom,) should arise another kingdom, (Dan. ii. 32 and 39,) 
 which was represented by the breast and arms of the image, which 
 were of silver. Here is a prophetic declaration believed to refer to 
 the Medo- Persian kingdom, which lasted two hundred and five years, 
 from the capture of Babylon by Cyrus (B. C. 536) to the battle of 
 Arbela, (B. C. 331.) As to the appropriateness of the symbols rep- 
 resenting this kingdom, it may be mentioned that the arms and 
 shields of the Medes and Persians were frequently cased with silver ; 
 wherefore Alexander, after the conquest of Persia, adopting the cus- 
 toms of the conquered nations, instituted a body of infantry which he 
 called the " silver, shields" In the first vision of Daniel the same 
 kingdom is represented by the second beast, a bear with three ribs 
 in its mouth ; (Dan. vii. 5 ;) and in the second vision by a ram, 
 (Dan. viii. 3,) the figure of which, it is known, became, after the time 
 of Daniel, the armorial ensign of the Persian empire. Moreover, in 
 the vision, Daniel saw that the ram had two horns, and that " the 
 one which came up last was higher than the other," the lower horn 
 believed to denote the Median power, and the higher one the Persian, 
 for these two powers constituted the Medo-Persian empire. It is an 
 interesting fact that rams' heads, with unequal horns, one higher 
 than the other, are still to be seen on the ruined pillars of Persepolis. 
 Moreover Daniel " saw the ram, (that is, the Medo-Persian empire,) 
 pushing westward, and northward, and southward," (Dan. viii. 4.) 
 History verifies the interpretation, for in this exact order were
 
 CHAP. VII.] HISTORICAL PROPHECIES. 735 
 
 Lydia, Babylonia, and Egypt, (represented in the first vision (Dan. 
 vii. 5) by three ribs in the bear's mouth,) subdued by Cyrus and his 
 successor Cambyses. The second kingdom, more powerful than the 
 first, btit, like it, held together by the feeblest bonds of union, owed 
 its fall, after an existence of two centuries, more to the crimes of its 
 monarchs, the mal-adniinistration of government, and the repeated 
 disputes and wars for succession, than to the small but highly effect- 
 ive force brought against it. 
 
 18. THE THIRD KINGDOM. The third division of the compound 
 image which Nebuchadnezzar saw (Dan. ii. 32 39) was the " belly and 
 thighs of brass" explained with great historical minuteness, as de- 
 noting the Macedo- Grecian kingdom of Alexander and his successors. 
 The Greeks usually wore brazen armor, whence Homer calls them 
 the " brazen-corslet Grecians." In the first vision of Daniel the same 
 kingdom is represented by the third beast a leopard with two pair 
 of wings and four heads, the wings aptly denoting the rapidity of 
 the conquests of Alexander ; and the four heads, the four kingdoms, 
 Macedon, Thrace, Syria, and Egypt, into which the empire of Alex- 
 ander was divided among his generals. In the second vision of the 
 prophet the same Macedo- Grecian kingdom is represented by " a 
 lie-goat that came from the west (Macedonia) and touched not the 
 ground" for swiftness. " And the he-goat had a notable horn be- 
 tween his eyes" (Alexander the Great), and " he ran at the ram" 
 (Darius the Persian) " and smote him, and cast him upon the ground." 
 But when '' the he-goat waxed very great, the great horn was broken," 
 (Alexander's -death) "and in its place came up four notable ones 
 towards the four winds of Heaven. (Alexander's four successors, 
 among whom his kingdom was divided.) But this part of the second 
 vision is interpreted to Daniel with all the distinctness with which 
 the history itself could have been written after the events had trans- 
 pired. For Daniel was told, (Dan. viii. 20-22 :) " The ram which 
 thou sawest having two horns are the kings (or kingdoms) of Media 
 and Persia. And the rough goat is the king (or kingdom) of 
 Grecia ; and the great horn between his eyes is the first king, (Alex- 
 ander.) Now that being broken, whereas four rose in its stead, four 
 kingdoms shall arise out of the nation, but not in his potcer" 
 that is, not of the family of Alexander. In the fourth vision of 
 the prophet the same historical truths are presented with similar ex- 
 plicitness in the second, third, and fourth verses of the eleventh 
 chapter of Daniel, with the additional notice that a certain king of
 
 736 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAST IIL 
 
 Persia (Darius Codomanus) should stir up the whole empire for an 
 invasion of " the realm of Grecia" The prophecy respecting the 
 Third or ".Macedo-Grecian" kingdom, is so distinct, and so minute 
 in its details, and the historical verification so perfect, that no candid 
 mind will attribute the coincidence to chance or accident. 
 
 19. THE FOURTH KINGDOM. The fourth division of the image 
 which Nebuchadnezzar saw, and which Daniel declared to represent 
 the fourth kingdom, was " the legs of iron, and the feet part of iron 
 and part of clay." (Dan. ii. 33.) This is believed to denote the 
 Roman dominion, which reached its full vigor about the time of the 
 conquests of Macedon, Greece, and Carthage, when the republic, 
 under the consular government, was the strongest, as represented by 
 the " legs of iron." Rome, the " Mistress of Nations," the " Mother 
 of Empires," was the greatest monarchy the world has ever known. 
 It continued in the full tide of prosperity until the conquest of 
 Egypt, (B. C. 30,) after which it gradually declined under the 
 monarchy : the partition of the empire into Eastern and Western 
 greatly weakened it ; and it gradually sunk under the repeated in- 
 vasions of the Gothic and Vandal tribes, and was finally broken into 
 ten kingdoms, as represented by the ten toes of the image. Daniel 
 says : " As the toes of the feet were part of iron and part of clay, so 
 the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly broken." (Dan. ii. 42.) 
 In the first vision of Daniel the same kingdom is represented by the 
 fourth beast', which was " dreadful and terrible, and strong exceed- 
 ingly ; and it had great iron teeth ; it devoured and broke in pieces, 
 and stamped the residue with the feet of it ; and it was diverse from 
 all the beasts that were before it ; and it had ten horns." (Dan. 
 vii. 7.) Here the Roman power and progress are aptly represented. 
 It was the strongest of the four kingdoms, its very name (Ro-me) 
 being the Grecian term for strength, and it broke in pieces, and de- 
 voured, the previous three kingdoms ; and the residue (the western 
 provinces of the Roman empire, Spain, Gaul, &c.) it "trampled 
 upon with the feet of it." And as in the first vision of Daniel, the 
 first three kingdoms had been represented by a lion, a bear, and a 
 leopard, (Dan. vii,) so St. John, in the Revelation, (Rev. xiii. 1, 2,) 
 describes the form of the fourth beast (or kingdom) as being com- 
 pounded of all the rest, having " the body of the leopard, the feet of 
 the bear, and the mouth of the lion ;" and thus the Roman empire em- 
 braced the territories of the preceding empires. In the second vision 
 of Daniel the fourth kingdom is represented by " a little horn" spring-
 
 OHAP. VII] HISTORICAL PROPHECIES. 737 
 
 ing up from one (the western, or Macedonian) of the four heads (or 
 kingdoms) into which the empire of Alexander had been divided. The 
 progress of the Roman power is here geographically described also ; 
 for this little horn " waxed exceeding great towards the south, (Sicily 
 and Africa.) and towards the east, (Macedon, Greece, and Syria,) and 
 towards the pleasant land, (Judea.) 
 
 20. Thus, as marked out by prophecy, four times have the nations 
 of the earth gathered themselves into mighty aggregates of power, 
 denoted Universal Empires or Monarchies : none like went before, and 
 none like have come after them ; and it is upon the warrant of nega- 
 tive scripture testimony that men believe no other temporal universal 
 empire possible. But, still, the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, and the 
 interpretation of the prophet, point to a fifth monarchy greater than 
 all the others, that shall arise when Christianity shall have swallowed 
 up all other forms of religion, and the nations of the earth shall be 
 gathered into one fold, under one all- conquering Shepherd the 
 Prince of Peace. a For Nebuchadnezzar saw a " stone cut out with- 
 out hands, which smote the image and became a great mountain, and 
 filled the whole earth," (Dan. ii. 34-5,) and this the prophet himself 
 declares to be " the kingdom which the God of Heaven should set 
 up, and which shall never be destroyed." The first and the fourth 
 vision of Daniel contain farther prophecies relating to this kingdom. 
 
 21. While Daniel, in the first vision, was considering the ten. 
 horns (or kingdoms), b a little Jiorn, believed by Protestant writers to 
 denote Papal Rome, came up among them, and before it were three 
 of the first horns plucked up by the roots ; the kingdom of the 
 Ileruli in the year 488 of the Ostrogoths in 553 and of the Lom- 
 bards in 756. The seventh chapter of Daniel also gives an interpre- 
 tation of the vision, and says of this little horn or kingdom that it 
 " shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out 
 the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws ; 
 and they (the saints) shall be given into his hand until a time, and 
 times, and the dividing (or half) of time.' 1 ' 1 The period here denoted, 
 in which the supposed Papal power was to prevail, is found to be 
 twelve hundred and sixty years, allowing a day for a year, as ex- 
 plained in the Apocalypse. (Rev. xi. 3 xii. 6, 14.) Dr. Hales, a 
 
 a. Hence the fanatics of 1650, who looked for the immediate advent of the Saviour to rule 
 over the whole earth as a temporal prince, were usually called Fifth Monarchists. 
 
 b. The ten kingdoms into which that of Rome was broken, or divided, are generally believed 
 to have been the following, with their dates, Huns, (A. D. 356) Ostrogoths, (377) K*i- 
 g oths, (378) Franks, (407) Sandals, (W'jSutvi, (Wl)Burffundians, (407; Ilcruii, (476> 
 Saxorts, (176)- and Lombards, (483526.) 
 
 47
 
 738 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III, 
 
 celebrated English divine and chronologist, computes the commence- 
 ment of the period at A. D. G20, and the end of it at A. D. 1880. 
 We have not room to follow out here the reasoning on which the 
 chronology is based. 
 
 22. Th fulfilment of the prophecies relating to the taking away 
 of the daily sacrifice of the Jews, and the destruction of the city and 
 sanctuary of Jerusalem by the Romans, is so clear in relation to 
 the times mentioned as to satisfy the most arrant scepticism. The 
 period of the two thousand three hundred days (years, Dan. viii. 14) 
 at the expiration of which the " transgression of desolation" should 
 cease, and the " sanctuary be cleansed," is computed by Dr. Hales to 
 have commenced B. C. 420, and the expiration of this period is also 
 placed in the year of our Lord 1880. Most Protestant theological 
 writers suppose that the three great angels described in the Apoca- 
 lypse (Rev. xiv. G-12) were the three great heralds of the REFORMA- 
 TION, Wickliffe, Huss, and Luther. 
 
 23. The eleventh chapter of Daniel contains a remarkable series 
 of prophetic declarations, foretelling the sufferings and persecutions 
 of the Jews, from Alexander's successors in Syria and Egypt, till 
 the end of the reign of Antiochus Epiph' anes, a period of one hun- 
 dred and sixty years. Bishop Newton, who has given a copious illus- 
 tration of the historical facts which verify the whole of this prophecy, 
 remarks that " there is not in profane history so complete and regular 
 a series of Egyptian and Syrian kings, and so concise and compre- 
 hensive an account of their affairs, as is found in this chapter of the 
 prophet Daniel," and that " the prophecy is really more perfect than 
 any one history." Dr, Hales says that " these prophecies of Daniel 
 are, if possible, more surprising and astonishing than even his grand 
 prophetic period of two thousand three hundred years, and the sev- 
 eral successions of empire that were to precede the spiritual kingdom 
 of God upon the earth." With reference to the exact fulfilment of 
 these prophecies he remarks : " Even the infidel Porphyry, who had 
 access to several sources of information now lost, was so confounded 
 by this exactness that he was driven to deny the authenticity of the 
 prophecy relating to the Jews, declaring that it could not have been 
 written before, but must have been compiled offer, the reign of An- 
 tiochus Epiph' anes. But the prophecy is so intimately connected 
 with the preceding and following parts of the vision, which relate to 
 the Macedonians and Romans, that it must have been written by 
 the same hand, and therefore be esteemed equally genuine with the
 
 CHAP. VII.] HISTORICAL PROPHECIES. 739 
 
 whole book of Daniel. The astonishing exactness, indeed, with 
 which this minute prophetic detail has been fulfilled, furnishes the 
 strongest pledge, from analogy, that the remaining prophecies were, 
 and will be, as exactly fulfilled, each in its proper season." 
 
 24. The Old Testament abounds in prophecies which foretell the 
 time and the circumstances of the coming of Christ the Messiah. 
 That event was to happen before the sceptre should depart from 
 Judah, a and while a prince, of Jewish descent reigned over the 
 Jews in their own land : the Messiah was to come while the second 
 temple was standing, b and a messenger was to appear before him, 
 the voice of one crying in the wilderness to prepare his way. c In 
 the prophecies of Daniel the same event is foretold, (Dan. ix. 24-27,) 
 and specified periods (marked according to similar computations in 
 the Jewish scriptures, by weeks of years, each day for a year) are 
 designated for the birth of the Messiah, his death, the duration of the 
 Jewish war, and the destruction of Jerusalem. This illustrious 
 prophecy Sir Isaac Newton declares to be " the fmmdation of the 
 Christian religion.' 1 ' 1 
 
 25. The subject of the prophecies embraced in the Old Testament 
 is one of so vast magnitude, that a brief sketch of only a few pages 
 devoted to it must be imperfect in the extreme ; but our object will 
 have been accomplished if the little that we have said shall induce 
 the reader to examine farther the historical evidences which the 
 prophecies furnish in favor of the Christian religion, and which may 
 be found in full detail in the works of Newton and Hales, d and an 
 excellent compend of which is contained in the valuable work of 
 Keith. The disciples of the Christian religion believe that its 
 doctrines rest on a basis firm as immutable truth ; and among the 
 evidences of the reasonableness of their faith they point with confi- 
 dence to the prophecies which set forth the circumstances attendant 
 upon the introduction, progress, and final triumph, of that religion ; 
 which contain historical proofs the most conclusive, and furnish the 
 Christian with arguments which the cavillings of infidelity have never 
 been able to invalidate. "Whoever expresses an infidel doubt against 
 the Christian religion, before he has fully examined the evidences 
 which prophecy arid history combined furnish in its favor, shows not 
 only an unwarranted prejudice against the truth, but the most culpa- 
 ble ignorance and presumption also. 
 
 a. Gen. xlix. 10. b. Hag. ii. 7, 9. Rial. iii. 1. c. Isa. xl. 3. Mai. iii. ] iv. 5. 
 
 d. Thomas Newton on the Prophecies, 2 vols. 12mo, 1793. Hales' Analysis of Chronology 
 and Geography, History and Prophecy, 4 vols. 8vo, 1830.
 
 740 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAET IIL 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. Rome at the commencement of the Christian era. The Roman empire. 2. 
 beginning of the history of Imperial Rome. Roman greatness not destroyed by Caesar. 3. 
 POWER AND MAJESTY OF ROME AND HER CjKSARs. 4. Sacred character of the emperor 
 attached to the office rather than the man. 5. Atrocities of the early Caesars. Character of 
 Caligula. G. Story of Caligula and the two consuls : of Caligula and his wife Csesonia. Clau- 
 dius and Nero. How their crimes were viewed by the people. 7. Virtues of the people of 
 Republican Rome. Causes of the rapid declension from virtue revolutionary wars changes 
 in the character of the population, &c. 
 
 8. Conquests of Republican Rome. Peaceful FOREIGN POLICY of Augustus and his success- 
 ors. S. Departures from this policy. 10. Policy of Adrian and the Antoniues. 11. Decline 
 of the empire under succeeding rulers. Causes and consequences of this decline an interest- 
 ing subject of philosophical research. Proposed view of the subject. 
 
 12. INTERNAL CONDITION OF THE ROMAN WORLD IN THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES. Repub- 
 lican simplicity of the early emperors. 13. The republican forms retained by Augustus and 
 succeeding rulers. The numerous offices concentrated in the person of the emperor. Extent 
 of the royal prerogatives. The illusion cherished by the people. 14. Increase of prosperity 
 and population after Claudius. Italy and Greece compared. Amount of population in the 
 empire. 15. THE SLAVES OF THE ROMANS. Derivation of the term slave. 16. Sanguinary 
 character of the wars of the ancients. Treatment of slaves. Their value. Manumission of 
 slaves. 17. ROMAN CITIZENS. Extension of the rights of citizenship. 18. TAXATION, under 
 Augustus, Caracalla, Alexander Severus, &c. 19. Depopulation of the provincial districts. 
 Foreign luxuries. 20. General poverty of the people. The amount of taxation. 21. Fixedness 
 of the amount on each municipality. Causes of the impoverishment of the provinces. 22. 
 THK ROMAN ARMY ; recruited in early times from the citizens only in later times from the 
 barbarians. Examples, in the times of Marius and Caesar ; at a later period. 23. Decline 
 of public virtue in the army how the emperors attempted to supply the defect. The pay of 
 soldiers. 24. Military strength of the empire. Divisions of the legions. Their principal sta- 
 tions. " City Cohorts" and " Praetorian Guards." 25. Military tactics, armor, and discipline. 
 26. The cavalry. A Roman camp. The Roman navy. 27. The RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 
 DURING THE EMPIRE. 28. Intolerance towards the Christians. Rise, progress, and influence, 
 of Christianity. 29. The pagan religions how viewed by the philosophers. The advantages of 
 some religion admitted by all. General infidelity on the subject of religion. 30. The educated 
 pagans. Superstitions of the common people. 31. SOCIAL MORALITY OF THE ROMANS. 32. 
 Demoralizing effects of domestic slavery. 33. Of the favorite amusements of the Romans 
 mock sea-fights, and the combats of the gladiators. Tragedy, in its gross reality. Influence 
 of Christianity. 
 
 34. OUTWARD APPEARANCES OF GENERAL PROSPERITY IN THE AGK OF THI ANTONINES. 
 35. Populousness of Italy, Gaul, and Britain. Carthage and the Eastern provinces. 36. The 
 public highways. Construction of the Appian Way. 37. Aqueducts leading into the capital. 
 Buildings of the Imperial age. 38. Roman architecture. 39. Sculpture and painting. The 
 Laocoon and the Apollo Belvidere. 40. Education of the common, people. Branches taught 
 in the public schools. Additional instruction of the higher classes. 41. Support of the 
 Bchools. Encouragement given to education by Vespasian, Adrian, and Antoninus Pius. 
 Mathematics and the Natural Sciences. Bookshops. Libraries. 
 
 42. THE SILVER AGE OF ROMAN LITERATURE. Niebuhr's view of it. Gibbon's view. Servile 
 imitation of the Greek writers. 43. The most distinguished Roman writers ir this period of 
 decline. 44. Opposing opinions entertained of Lucan. Lucan's Pbarsalia. 45. Wiitings and 
 character of Seneca. Juvenal. 46. Pliny the Elder. 47. Quinctilian the rhetor.cian. 48. 
 Tacitus the historian.
 
 CHAP. VIIL] THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 741 
 
 49. GREEK LITERATURE DURING THE SILVER AGE. Dionysius the critic. Strabo tb 
 geographer. 50. 1'lntarch, Lucien, Galen, Pausanias, &c. 
 
 51. ROMAN HISTORY AFTER THE TIME OF THE ANTOMNES. Science of jurisprudence. Phi- 
 losophical school of the Eclectics. Their system and its results. 5-2. Revival of Grecian litera- 
 ture. Longinus, Arrian, Diogenes Laertius, Herodian, and Dio Cassius. 
 
 53. INCREASING CAUSES OF DECLINE. Education for the many neglected. Public morals 
 depraved. Diverse interests, &c., in the widely-distant provinces. Division of the empire. 
 The citizens confounded wilt the provincials. Mercenary legions. Election of emperor. Theold 
 attachments to Rome broken. The destruction completed by the barbarians. 54. Gloomy fore- 
 bodings. Examples from the opposite extremes of the pagan and the Christian world. Byron. 
 
 I. 
 
 1 . At the commencement of the Christian era, the little settlement 
 of mud-walled cottages which Romulus and his robber band had 
 formed on the Palatine Hill, had grown into a mighty city a nation 
 in itself the emporium of commerce and the arts, and the Mistress 
 of the civilized world. The laws and institutions of Augustus, and 
 the gradual assimilation of manners, cemented the union of the 
 provinces ; and had public and private virtue remained, and wise 
 legislation continued to uphold the fabric, the history of the " Decline 
 and Fall " of the Roman empire the last of the great monarchies 
 of Prophecy might not yet have been written. 
 
 2. With the overthrow of the republican constitution by Julius 
 Caesar, the history of Imperial Rome commences : the struggles 
 that followed the death of the usurper are only an interlude between 
 the first and the second acts of the drama. But the destruction of 
 Roman greatness was not an act of Caesar : Rome, already given up 
 to anarchy and civil war, and fast falling a prey to its own passions, 
 was saved from dissolution by an act of daring usurpation ; and it 
 was through the twelve Caesars, of whom Julius was the first, that 
 ehe attained the summit of her power, and fulfilled her destiny. 
 
 3. If Imperial Rome embracing within herself and her mighty 
 suburbs' 1 not less than three millions of inhabitants was the " Mis- 
 tress of Nations," the " Mother of Empires," in comparison with 
 whom other cities were but villages : the Roman Caesars 
 
 ' .. . POWKE AND 
 
 were monarchs, in comparison with whom all modern MAJESTY OF 
 kings or emperors are mere phantoms of royalty. In the KOME AND 
 times of the Caesars there were no other kings that de- 
 
 a. Including the numerous contiguous villages immediately dependent upon the capital for 
 support. Much has been written on this subject. Vossius, Lipsius, Chateaubriand, and 
 others, assign to imperial Rome fourteen, seven, five, and three millions of inhabitants : Hume, 
 seven hundred thousand to eight hundre I thousand ; and Gibbon one million two hundred 
 thousand. De Quincey (" The Caesars," p. \) " resolutely maintains" that her population was 
 "not less than/or million*.''
 
 742 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAET III. 
 
 served the appellation : there were no antagonist forces to raise up 
 formidable bulwarks against the majesty of Rome : civilization and 
 the Roman empire were commensurate terms ; and during more 
 than two centuries nearly the whole habitable world known to 
 Geography or recognized by History, slumbered in security under 
 the protecting aegis of the Roman name. The occasional wars on 
 the distant frontiers were pulsations scarcely felt in the capital, and 
 seldom disturbing its luxurious lull of repose. 
 
 4. It should not therefore surprise us that the person of the Roman 
 emperor the inheritor of power so vast, so intense should have 
 been called " august," sacred, and not merely so called through ex- 
 cess of adulation, but so regarded by the Romans, with a kind of re- 
 ligious awe, that to doubt his consecrated character was the double 
 crime of treason and heresy. But this veneration attached to the 
 office rather than the man ; for the tenure of supreme power in im- 
 perial Rome was ever hazardous : rivals and competitors might 
 aspire to the same station; a mercenary army might desire a more 
 prodigal master ; or the dagger of an assassin might invade the im- 
 perial chamber. From the heights of glory the transition was often 
 sudden to the depths of misery ; and coloring the most brilliant and 
 gorgeous, and shades the deepest and darkest, are in striking contrast 
 in the pictures of the Roman Caesars. Nowhere else does history 
 furnish so intensely interesting studies of individual character. 
 
 5. While the vast power and unrivalled splendors of imperial 
 Rome fix our attention and command our admiration, the monstrous 
 atrocities of the early Caesars loom up in the background of the 
 picture like " shapes hot from Tartarus," in strange and bewildering 
 contrast. Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, shock us by com- 
 binations of wickedness for which history has no parallel ; and it is 
 hard to say whether the levity or brutality of their baseness most 
 merits our execration. In Caligula, crime was but the pastime of 
 his hours of amusement : his banquets were insipid without a supply 
 of executions, his dinners incomplete without such a dessert ; and 
 he deplored the tameness and insipidity of his own times, as likely 
 to be marked by no wide-spreading calamity of war, pestilence, or 
 famine. 
 
 6. We are told that when the two consuls were once seated at his 
 table he burst into a fit of immoderate laughter at the pleasant 
 thought of the facility with which he might have both their throats 
 cut, with so little trouble to himself ; and that,- while toying play-
 
 CHAP. VIII.] THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 743 
 
 fully and fondly with the polished throat of his wife Caesonia, he was 
 distracted between the desire of caressing it, which might be often re- 
 peated, and that of cutting it, which could be gratified but once. 
 Claudius and Nero were varieties of the same species, the former, 
 an imbecile tyrant the tool of profligate associates, the latter a 
 very amateur of murder ; but what shocks us even more than the 
 baseness of the later Caesars, (for they may be justly entitled to the 
 apology of hereditary madness or lunacy,) are the public demonstra- 
 tions of approval with which their blackest crimes were sometimes 
 greeted ; as when Tiberius received the thanks of the senate for his 
 clemency in putting to death the unfortunate and virtuous widow of 
 Germanicus because, she was not publicly strangled, nor her body 
 drawn through the streets like that of a public malefactor ; and 
 when Nero received the congratulations of all orders of men for the 
 infamous murder of his own mother. 
 
 7. And yet, fifty years before the times of the emperors, the Ro- 
 mans were a people of severe morals, and stern republican virtues. 
 Can it be that such monsters as Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero, their 
 abettors and parasites the degraded senate and the fickle and de- 
 praved populace, were the immediate descendants of the same race ? 
 If so, what causes could have produced this rapid and wonderful de- 
 clension from virtue. ? Some of them may be traced to the great 
 revolutionary struggles which gave birth to the empire : for revo- 
 lutionary times relax all modes of moral obligation, and introduce a 
 general licentiousness and depravity in private life. In the second 
 place, the civil wars swept away the greatest and best of the Roman 
 nobility, together with vast numbers of the better classes of the Ro- 
 man people ; and, to fill their places, Syrians, Cappadocians, Phryg- 
 ians, and great numbers of enfranchised slaves, were brought from 
 the provinces ; so that, in a single generation, Republican Rome was 
 transmuted into a nation of barbarians, with a strong taint of 
 Asiatic luxury and depravity.* It has been estimated that, in the 
 time of Nero, not one man in six was of pure Roman descent. 
 Juvenal complains that long before his time, the Orontes (a river of 
 Syria) had mingled its impure waters with the Tiber. Such, not- 
 withstanding all the splendors and glory of the imperial city, was 
 the character of its population under the rule of the Csesars. 
 
 a. Lucan, after enumerating Galatians, Syrians, Cappadocians, Gauls, Celtiberians, Anne* 
 aians, Cilicians, &.C., says : 
 
 " nam post civilia bella 
 
 Jfic populus Romanus erit"
 
 744 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 II. 
 
 8. The youthful energies of a growing republic, and the martial 
 virtues of the people, had marked the first seven centuries of Rome's 
 existence with a rapid succession of conquests ; but Augustus saw 
 
 the necessity of relinquishing the design of subduing the 
 ^POLICY* whole earth ; and in his will he bequeathed, as a valuable 
 
 legacy to his successors, the advice to restrict the empire 
 to the limits which it had already attained. It was perhaps fortunate 
 for the repose of surrounding nations that the system recommended 
 by Augustus was adopted by the fears and vices of his immediate 
 successors. 
 
 9. The only departure from this peaceful policy, previous to the 
 reign of Trajan, was the conquest of Britain during the first century 
 of the Christian era, after a war of forty years' duration, a war, 
 says Gibbon, " undertaken by the most stupid, maintained by the 
 most dissolute, and terminated by the most timid, of all the Roman 
 emperors." In the person of Trajan, the Romans received a mili- 
 tary emperor ambitious of fame and emulous of the martial glories 
 of Alexander. After a war of five years he added Dacia to the Ro- 
 man dominions ; and in an expedition against the nations of the 
 East reduced Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria, while his fleets, 
 setting sail on the waters of the Persian Gulf, ravaged the coasts of 
 Arabia. 
 
 10. But Adrian, the successor of Trajan, adopting the maxims of 
 Augustus, withdrew the Roman garrisons from the newly-conquered 
 provinces, and once more established the Euphrates and the Danube 
 as the frontiers of the empire. The two Antonines pursued, with 
 trifling exceptions, the same policy, and by the justice which they 
 exhibited in their foreign relations, and the firmness with which they 
 repelled aggressions, caused the Roman name to be respected and 
 revered among the most remote nations. 
 
 11. Succeeding rulers, relinquishing the idea of extending the do- 
 minions of the already overgrown empire, aimed only to preserve its 
 ancient limits ; but the task grew more and more difficult ; gradually 
 province after province was abandoned, till the Roman world was re- 
 duced to the narrow limits of Italy ; Rome was repeatedly pillaged by 
 barbarians ; and, finally, a Gothic kingdom was established on the ruins 
 of the Empire of the Caesars. The causes of the decline and fall of the 
 Roman empire, and the consequences resulting to European civilization 
 from the unloosing and breaking up of the elements which composed
 
 CHAP. VIIL] THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 745 
 
 the complex fabric, present one of the most interesting fields of philo- 
 sophical research which history furnishes. A brief view of this important 
 subject is all that can be given here ; and as a just understanding of it 
 presupposes a knowledge of the internal condition of the Roman 
 world at the period when its prosperity had reached its height, we 
 shall first take a survey of the elements of Roman society as they 
 existed in the age of the Antonines, near the close of the second cen- 
 tury of the Christian era. It is immediately after this period, with 
 the accession of the young ruffian Commodus, that Gibbon com- 
 mences his story of the decline of the empire. 
 
 III. 
 
 12. In the age of the Antonines, the Roman dominion extended 
 from the wall of Scotland to the JEuphrates : and from 
 
 INTERNAL 
 
 the Rhine and the Danube to Mount Atlas, the African CONDITION OF 
 deserts, and the cataracts of the Nile ; embracing the THE EOMAN 
 fairest regions of the known world, and the most civil- THE AGE OF 
 ized portions of mankind. The vast empire included THE ANT - 
 within these limits was under an absolute monarchy, 
 disguised by the forms of the old Roman commonwealth ; for the 
 wisest emperors professed themselves the accountable ministers of the 
 senate, and, disdaining the pomp and ceremony of Eastern royalty, 
 cloaked their real power under the garb of republican simplicity. 
 
 13. When Augustus subverted the republic, he artfully retained 
 the ancient forms, professed to restore the senate to its ancient 
 rights, and, while he deluded the people with the image of civil 
 liberty, forged for them the chains of despotism. The true character 
 of his early public acts was concealed under the mask of hypocrisy ; 
 and if he at last became, as he was called, the " father of the people," 
 it was because his own interests did not run counter to the public 
 welfare. Succeeding emperors, down to the time of Commodus, if 
 we except those tyrants who violated every law of decency and every 
 rule of policy, imitated the democratic affectation of Augustus, and, 
 in all the offices of life, mingled freely with their subjects, and 
 studiously affected to place themselves on a level with the tribunes, 
 censors, and consuls, of former times, the powers of whose offices 
 were now united in the royal prerogative. The emperor, by virtue 
 of his office, was commander of the army and navy ; as consul, he 
 was the minister of the senate, whose decrees he dictated, and seemed 
 to obey; and as tribune, he was the representative of the people;
 
 746 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 while the dignity of supreme pontiff gave him the management of 
 religion ; and that of censor, the control of morals and education. 
 To sum up the extent of the royal prerogatives, not only could the 
 emperor make peace, declare war, ratify treaties, and employ the 
 revenue at discretion, but by a comprehensive decree of the senate 
 conferring the powers of former emperors upon Vespasian, he was 
 empowered to execute whatever he should judge advantageous to the 
 empire, and agreeable to the majesty of things, private or public, hu- 
 man or divine. Yet the Romans, abhorring the name of king, looked 
 with complacency upon the title of " Augustus," and cherished the 
 illusion that it represented only the chief magistrate of a free com- 
 monwealth. 
 
 14. During the reigns of several emperors after Claudius, there 
 
 was a gradual increase of prosperity in the Roman prov- 
 
 POPULATION. . 3 . r ' T . J . 
 
 inces, and an increase of population, which was still con- 
 fined to the towns ; for the Romans never dispersed themselves over 
 the country, like the occupants of the small farms and plantations of 
 modern times. Italy was gradually recovering from the desolation 
 which civil wars had spread over it, but Greece remained a poor and 
 desolated country. The entire population of the Roman empire in 
 the time of Claudius was estimated by Gibbon at one hundred and 
 twenty millions, of all classes and both sexes, one half of whom were 
 slaves. Yet Robertson estimated that there were twice as many 
 slaves as freemen ; and Mr. Blair that the number of the former wag 
 three times the greatest. 
 
 15. The slaves of the Romans consisted, for the most part, of bar- 
 SLAVES barian captives taken in war, and sold by the government, 
 OF THE or purchased from the surrounding nations. The deriva- 
 EOMANS. j.j on O f ^6 t erm perpetuates a historic truth ; but its 
 
 present meaning, which appears to have arisen in France, in the 
 eighth century, shows a strange perversion of the original sense of 
 the appellation. Slava, the root of the term Slavonian, signified 
 renown, glory ; but when, in the eighth century, the French princes 
 became rich in Slavonian captives, the national appellation of the 
 Slaves (Slavonians) was degraded from the signification of glory to 
 that of servitude. 
 
 16. The practice of reducing captives to slavery rendered the 
 wars of the ancients extremely sanguinary, and the battles obstinate ; 
 and as it could hardly be expected that those suddenly reduced from 
 a state of independence to servitude would neglect any opportunity
 
 CHAP. VIII.] THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 747 
 
 of recovering their freedom, they were subjected to the strictest dis- 
 cipline, and often treated with extreme cruelty. During a long 
 period, the master exercised the jurisdiction of life and death over 
 his slaves; but under the reign of Adrian and the Antonines, the 
 protection of the laws was extended to this unfortunate part of the Ro- 
 man population ; and, on. a just complaint of intolerable treatment, the 
 slave either obtained his freedom, or a less cruel master. Slaves of 
 promising genius were sometimes instructed in the arts and sciences ; 
 they were also found in the learned professions ; and many of the 
 Roman physicians belonged to this class of the population. The 
 price of a slave was regulated by the variations of supply and de- 
 mand, and the degree of skill and talent which he displayed. In the 
 camp of Lucullus an ox sold for one shilling, and a slave for three : 
 by the conquests of Titus and Vespasian the Jewish slaves so glutted 
 the market that no man would buy them ; but a learned slave, who 
 had been bred and taught by one Atticus, sold for many hundred 
 pounds sterling. Many of the Roman slaves were manumitted by 
 their masters ; when they became what were termed liberti or free- 
 men ; but after manumission they obtained no more than the private 
 rights of citizens, being excluded from either civil or military honors ; 
 and it was not until the third or fourth generation that all traces of 
 their servile origin were obliterated. 
 
 17. The free inhabitants of the Roman world, apart from the 
 freedmen and their descendants, were not all, for a long 
 period. Roman citizens. We have seen that at an early WHO WEK 
 
 r ' ' CITIZENS. 
 
 period of the Republic the right of citizenship, which 
 was at first confined to a part of the population of Rome, was ex- 
 tended to the freemen of nearly all the Italian towns. It was the 
 policy of the early emperors gradually to enlarge the nation of Ro- 
 man citizens by admitting the most faithful and deserving of the 
 provincials to the privileges of citizenship ; and in the age of the 
 Antonines this freedom had been bestowed upon the greater pro- 
 portion of the subjects of the empire. The boon stimulated the 
 national spirit, and was accompanied with solid advantages so long 
 as it implied the distinction which was designed to be kept up by 
 Augustus ; for with the title of citizens the people acquired the im- 
 portant benefit of the Roman laws, and the right of a free competition 
 for the highest honors of the State ; and it is asserted by Tacitus 
 that the grandsons of the Gauls who besieged Julius Csesar in one
 
 748 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III 
 
 of his campaigns, commanded legions, governed provinces, and were 
 admitted to the senate of Rome. 
 
 18. During more than a century and a-half previous to the reign 
 of Augustus, the Italians had been exempt from taxation, while the 
 
 tribute extorted from the provinces enriched Rome, and 
 defrayed all expenses of government. Augustus, com- 
 plaining of the insufficiency of the provincial tributes, introduced a 
 system of customs and duties, and caused the real and personal 
 property of the citizens to be assessed, and taxes on the same to be 
 paid into the treasury : he did not extend the system of direct taxa- 
 tion to the subjects who were not citizens, but demanded of them the 
 customary tribute. Caracalla was led to extend constitutional free- 
 dom over the whole empire, from the necessity, under which he had 
 placed himself, of gratifying the insatiable avarice of his army ; as 
 the proffered boon furnished him the pretext for demanding of the 
 provincials the customary taxes paid by the citizens, while he con- 
 tinued to extort from them the provincial tribute from which they 
 were legally exempted. During the reign of Alexander Severus the 
 provincials were relieved, in great measure, from this excessive taxa- 
 tion ; but under succeeding emperors they were crushed to the earth 
 and impoverished, and the country desolated, by heavy contributions 
 of corn, wine, oil, and meat, in addition to the ordinary taxes which 
 were exacted for the court, the army, and the capital. 
 
 19. Among the causes, and perhaps the most important of them, 
 that concurred to let in the barbarians, and thereby contributed to 
 the overthrow of the empire, was the depopulation of the provincial 
 districts, occasioned by the excess of taxation, and by the competition 
 which they had to encounter with the grain-growing districts of 
 Egypt, Libya, and Sicily. It has often been alleged that the luxu- 
 ries that flowed in from the conquered nations corrupted the Roman 
 people, and destroyed their military virtues that the legions could 
 not be recruited from Roman citizens and that the national defence 
 was thus left to the uncertain fidelity of the semi-barbarous tribes on 
 the frontiers. 
 
 20. But we know that, although corruption had pervaded the 
 higher ranks of the Romans, and subjected to its influences the chief 
 cities of the empire, the great mass of the people were suffer ing under 
 an excess of poverty ; and that it was in the lower ranks, and in the 
 country districts, that the greatest and most fatal weakness first ap- 
 peared Of the amount of taxation in proportion to property we
 
 CHAP. VIIL] THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 749 
 
 are ignorant, as the tributary persons were fictitious several indi- 
 gent citizens being united under one head, while the wealthy pro- 
 vincial represented several. In a poetical request sent to one who 
 had recently been appointed governor of Gaul, a wealthy poet, per- 
 sonifying his tribute under the figure of a triple monster, the Geryon 
 of the Grecian fables, implores the n'ew Hercules to save his life by 
 cutting off his three heads. 
 
 21. The fixedness of the amount on each municipality was a most 
 grievous oppression to the frontier districts ; and as the tax seldom 
 suffered any diminution, while the number of freemen on whom it 
 fell yearly grew less as disasters of war laid waste the provinces, 
 every attempt at productive industry was crushed, and the strongest 
 incentive to defensive exertions taken away. Added to this, the 
 grain-growing countries of Egypt, Libya, and Sicily, that were now 
 embraced in the Roman dominions, and which rewarded the labors 
 of the husbandman some fifty or sixty fold over the produce of the 
 lands of Italy, Greece, and Spain, crushed, by free competition, all 
 agricultural efforts in the latter countries, and forced the cultivators 
 there to retire from the unequal contest, and devote their lands to 
 pasturage, which required not one-fourth of the population that 
 would otherwise have been devoted to tillage. Thus an impoverished 
 population was driven back from the frontier districts upon the cities 
 of the interior, where indolence, with all its attendant evils of poverty 
 and crime, contributed to the destruction of the last remains of Ro- 
 man virtue. 
 
 22. The Roman army was the powerful instrument on which the 
 safety of the empire was thought to depend, by which its extensive 
 conquests were defended, and to which its honor was THE 
 principally intrusted. The early Romans were a nation ROMAN 
 
 of warriors ; and in the purer ages of the commonwealth 
 the constitution permitted the ranks of the army to be filled with 
 citizens only, who were interested in maintaining the government and 
 institutions to which they owed their safety and happiness, while the 
 officers were for the most part distinguished for their liberal birth 
 and education. Thus the profession of arms was dignified by the 
 rank and character of those who entered the service ; and as the 
 Roman conquests extended, the proportion of the subjects increased 
 over the number of citizens ; but as the civil wars began to encroach 
 on the public freedom, the armies were often recruited from the most 
 degraded of the populace, and from the camps of the barbarians ;
 
 750 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAET III 
 
 and the public virtue of the legions witnessed a corresponding de- 
 cline-. Sallust informs us that Marias levied troops for his African, 
 expedition from all who were inclined to volunteer, without observing 
 the ancient method of enrolling those of certain classes only ; and 
 Caesar formed one of his legions of Gauls and strangers ; although 
 he afterwards extended to them the privileges of citizenship for their 
 reward. At a later period entire legions of barbarian troops, who 
 served the readiest those who paid the highest, formed alternately 
 the terror and support of the tottering empire. 
 
 23. The Roman emperors, sensible of the decline of public virtue 
 in the army, endeavored to supply the defect by motives of honor, 
 the fear of punishment, and the hope of reward. The troops were 
 required to take an oath annually, with every circumstance of so- 
 lemnity, never to desert their standard, the golden eagle which glit- 
 tered in front of their legion, to be obedient to their officers, and 
 even to sacrifice their lives for the safety of their emperor, and the 
 good of their country. Cowardice or disobedience received the 
 severest punishment ; and the soldiers were taught to dread their 
 officers more than the enemy. Promotion was ever open to ability 
 and valor. In the time of Diocletian the annual stipend of a private 
 soldier was twelve pieces of gold equivalent to about forty-seven 
 dollars of our money. After twenty years' service, the veteran 
 received about four hundred and forty-five dollars, or a proportional 
 amount of land. 
 
 24. Some idea of the military strength of the empire may be 
 obtained from the number enrolled in the army, which, under the 
 peace establishment of Adrian, formed a standing force of. about 
 three hundred and seventy-five thousand men. This formidable body 
 was divided into thirty legions or brigades, each of which, with its 
 attendant auxiliaries, numbered about twelve thousand five hundred 
 men. The legions were stationed on the banks of large rivers, and 
 along the frontiers of the surrounding barbarous nations, the main 
 strength of the army being upon the Rhine and the Danube. The 
 court of the monarch, and the capital, were defended by about 
 twenty thousand chosen soldiers, who, under the titles of " City 
 Cohorts," and " Praetorian Guards," were the authors of almost 
 every revolution that distracted the empire, from the time of Au- 
 gustus, by whom they were instituted, to that of Constantino the 
 Great, who, in the war with Maxentius, the tyrant of Italy, almost 
 
 -
 
 CHAP. VIII.] THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 751 
 
 annihilated those haughty troops in battle 1 , and afterwards dispersed 
 the remnant among the legions on the frontiers. 
 
 25. In military tactics, armor, and discipline, the Romans in the 
 time of the empire were far in advance of the surrounding nations. 
 The Macedonian Phalanx was superior to the Grecian, and the Roman 
 legion to both. The former, presenting sixteen ranks of long pikes 
 wedged together in closest array, was well adapted to resist attack ; 
 but the superior activity of the Roman legion, which was usually 
 drawn up eight deep, with intervals of three feet between the files 
 as well as the ranks, rendered the latter a more available instrument 
 on the field of battle. The armor of a heavy armed Roman soldier 
 consisted of an open helmet, a breastplate or coat of mail, greaves 
 on the legs, an ample concave buckler on the left arm, a broadsword, 
 a light spear in the left hand, and a ponderous javelin in the right. 
 The utmost length of the javelin was about six feet. It was termi- 
 nated by a massy triangular point of steel twelve or eighteen inches 
 in length ; and when launched, by a powerful hand, a distance of ten 
 or twelve paces, no shield or corslet could resist its weight. Besides 
 his arms, the Roman soldier carried his tent furniture, instruments 
 of fortification, and provisions for many days ; and under all this 
 weight he was trained to march in a regular step. 
 
 26. The cavalry were incased in a coat of mail, a helmet, and 
 light boots ; they also bore on their left arms an oblong shield, while 
 the javelin, and a long broadsword, were their principal weapons of 
 offence. A Roman camp was an exact quadrangle on level ground, 
 surrounded by a rampart of earth usually twelve feet high, armed 
 with strong and intricate palisades, defended by a ditch of twelve 
 feet in depth as well as in breadth, from which the earth of the rani- 
 part had been taken. The Roman navy of Augustus and his suc- 
 cessors was small, as compared with the army, and was composed 
 principally of two permanent fleets, the one stationed at Ravenna on 
 the Adriatic, and the other at Misenum in the Bay of Naples. A 
 considerable force was stationed at Frejus, on the southern coast of 
 Gaul ; the Euxine was guarded by thirty or forty ships ; and a few 
 ressels preserved the communication between Gaul and Britain. The 
 ships seldom exceeded three ranks of oars, as those of greater burden 
 were considered too unwieldly for real service. 
 
 27. The religion of the Romans, which, in the early ages of the 
 republic, preserved a homogeneousness of character, gradually verged 
 into a complexity of rites and ceremonies, and a confused mm-
 
 752 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 gling of systems, as conquest enlarged the limits of the empire ; but 
 
 BELIGION human sacrifices were abolished in Gaul by the emperors 
 
 OF THE Tiberius and Claudius, not so much from motives of hu- 
 
 ROMANS . ,, ,1 ,, -.11 
 
 DURING THK inanity, as for the purpose ot suppressing the dangerous 
 EMPIRE, power of the Druids ; and the rites that exhibited the 
 abject superstition of the Egyptians were frequently prohibited at 
 Rome. 
 
 28. The Roman government, however, often departed from the 
 system of general toleration in its treatment of the Christian con- 
 verts, the growth of whose numbers in the midst of paganism, and 
 the final triumph of whose religion over all opposition, is one of the 
 most remarkable facts which history records. An account of the rise 
 and progress of Christianity must necessarily be passed over in a 
 work like the present, for want of room ; but the influence which 
 Christianity has exerted in the affairs of Europe, and the effects of 
 its principles upon the civilization of mankind, form an important 
 part of subsequent history. 
 
 29. The various pagan religions that were tolerated in the Roman 
 empire, were in general considered by philosophers as equally true, 
 or false, and equally useful ; and the Syrian and the Egyptian, the 
 Greek, the Roman, and the barbarian, could easily persuade them- 
 selves, that under different names and different forms of worship, 
 they adored the same deities. As a bond of society, the advantages 
 of some religion were admitted by all ; the persuasion that either in 
 this, or a future life, the crime of perjury will be punished, was gen- 
 erally acknowledged, although Lucian laments that, in his time, this 
 apprehension had lost much of its effect. But the gods of the 
 heathen, though still openly respected by all, had long been regarded 
 with secret contempt by the polished and enlightened ; and in the 
 age of the Antonines a general infidelity on the subject of religion 
 pervaded the minds of the people. 
 
 30. Something, however, was needed to supply the place of the 
 waning pagan mythology ; for the human mind cannot rest without 
 some principles of religious belief. The educated pagans found a 
 refuge in the metaphysical speculations of the Greek philosophers ; 
 while the multitude gave themselves up to a thousand superstitions, 
 which exercised a great influence over many of the better informed 
 classes also. Every unusual, unforeseen event, was converted into 
 au omen ; the science of Astrology was sedulously cultivated ; in- 
 terpreters of dreams, and fortune-tellers, exercised a gainful pro-
 
 CHAP. VIIL] THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 753 
 
 fession ; witchcraft, in its most gloomy features, seems to have been 
 universally believed in ; and while the power of magicians to raise 
 the dead was long a disputed question with the learned, it was never 
 doubted that ghosts were wont to rise of their own accord. "What 
 renders these superstitions peculiarly deserving of notice is the 
 strong hold which they had taken of the popular mind ; for the most 
 unnatural tales respecting them are related by the best Roman 
 writers as matters of veritable history. 
 
 31. Of the social morality of the Romans little need be said after 
 the examples which have been given, of unbounded 
 
 ,. . , . , , ... ' , , SOCIAL 
 
 licentiousness and crime in the nobility and the emper- MORALITY 
 ors. The manners and morals of the court ever exert OF THE 
 a commanding influence upon the people, from the same 
 principle that the tyranny of a despotic government is almost uni- 
 versally imitated in the private life of its subjects. While a con- 
 tempt of the decencies of life distinguished the Roman tyrants, a 
 general dissoluteness of manners pervaded the people ; and Tacitus 
 forcibly contrasts the virtues of the women of the rude German 
 tribes, with the shameless conduct of the Roman ladies. A state of 
 general concubinage prevailed, and was not deemed dishonorable ; 
 and infanticide, the prevailing vice of antiquity, was tolerated until 
 it was restrained by the laws of Valentinian and his associates. 
 
 32. In addition to the exceeding profligacy of the court, two other 
 agents, domestic slavery, and the barbarous nature of the favorite 
 public spectacles, may be assigned as prominent causes of the exceed- 
 ing depravity of morals in the times of the empire. The slave 
 merchants formed a large class, notorious for dishonesty ; and while 
 the moral character of the slaves was ruined by their degraded state, 
 owing to the vast multitudes and general distribution of these un- 
 fortunate people, society was infected by their vices. Again, the 
 manumitted slaves, er freedmen, debased by servitude, were, as 
 class, the most rapacious and insolent part of the population. 
 
 33. The Romans under the empire, gradually neglecting such 
 amusements as afforded intellectual recreation, turned with passion- 
 ate enthusiasm to the spectacles of the amphitheatre, among which, 
 mock sea fights, and the combats of gladiators with each other and 
 with wild beasts, were the most favored diversions. Among the sea 
 fights, Claudius exhibited one which exceeded all others in pomp as 
 well as atrocity. On the Fucine Lake he caused two fleets of gal- 
 leys, of fifty sail each, to be constructed ; these he manned with 
 
 48
 
 754 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 nineteen thousand slaves and criminals, whom he caused to fight for 
 the amusement of himself and court, and the degenerate Romans, 
 until the greater part were slaughtered. The gladiators, usually re- 
 fractory slaves or prisoners of war recently taken, were kept in large 
 buildings or prisons, and subjected to a long course of training, pre- 
 vious to being brought forward to contest in the arena. Nearly 
 every petty town in Italy had its amphitheatre, where the gladiators 
 were compelled to fight ; and thousands of them were annually 
 slaughtered by each other before the eyes of the Roman people, who 
 delighted in these spectacles of blood and cruelty. Tragedy had no 
 part in Roman literature ; but in gross reality it was continually be- 
 fore the eyes of the people, rendering their hearts seared and callous 
 to human suffering, and furnishing daily provocations to the appetite 
 for blood. The cruelties of the circus and amphitheatre are an addi- 
 tional key to the atrocities of the Roman Imperators. To the influence 
 of Christianity must be attributed the final suppression of these human 
 sacrifices, in the reign of the emperor Honorius. 
 
 IV. 
 
 34. But, turning from these gloomy pictures of national immor- 
 ality, we are compelled to admit that, notwithstanding the seeds of 
 
 decay which had long been terminating in the corrupt 
 
 OUTWARD J 
 
 APPEARANCES soil of Roman degeneracy, the empire presented, in the 
 OF GENERAL a g e O f jjjg Antonines, an outward appearance of general 
 
 PROSPERITY . m , . . . . , .., , 
 
 IN THE AGE prosperity. The true principles or social lite, laws, agn- 
 OF THE culture, and science, which had first been invented by 
 the wisdom of Athens, were then firmly established by 
 the power of Rome, under, whose auspicious influence the fiercest 
 barbarians were united by an equal government and common lan- 
 guage. "With the improvement of arts, population increased ; the 
 cities gained additional splendor ; the beautiful face of the country 
 was cultivated and adorned like an immense garden ; and a long 
 festival of peace' was enjoyed by many nations forgetful of their 
 ancient animosities, and delivered from the apprehension of future 
 dangers.* 
 
 35. Ancient Italy is stated by a writer of the time of Alexander 
 Severus, to have contained eleven hundred and ninety-seven cities. 
 Gaul, in the time of Vespasian, could boast of twelve hundred ; and 
 Pliny assigns three hundred and sixty to Spain. In the woods of 
 
 a. Gibbon, i. 34, quotes from Pliny, Tertullian, &c.
 
 CHAP. VIII.j THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 755 
 
 Britain spaees had been opened for convenient and elegant habitations. 
 York, the capital, was a thriving town ; Bath was celebrated for its 
 medicinal waters ; and a busy commerce already enlivened the streets 
 of London. Carthage had arisen with new splendor from its ashes, 
 and was regarded as the capital of Africa. Corinth and Athens had 
 recovered all the advantages that could be separated from sovereignty ; 
 and Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, exhibited a multitude of cities 
 whose splendor is attested by their ruins. 
 
 36. The cities of the most distant provinces were united with each 
 other, and with the capital, by public highways, traces of which, at- 
 testing the solidity of their construction, are still visible after the 
 lapse of fifteen centuries. These roads consisted of a terrace of 
 earth, sand, gravel, and cement, in many places paved with large 
 stones, and near the capital with blocks of granite. The most entire, 
 as well as the most ancient of these highways, is the Appian road, 
 commenced in the four hundred and forty second year of Rome, and 
 leading from the capital through Capua to Brundusium. At a depth 
 of several feet is found, in the Appian way, a pavement of hard 
 whitish stone ; above is a bed of pebbles and gravel, on which r%sts 
 the surface pavement, composed of stones with hewn edges, and fitted 
 to each other with the utmost exactness. The lower pavement was 
 probably the original road, and it is supposed that the upper stratum 
 was added in, the times of Nerva and Trajan. 
 
 37. The aqueducts leading into the capital were perhaps the most 
 extraordinary works of the Roman people. Of these, the nine which 
 supplied Rome with water in the reigns of Nerva and Trajan, had a 
 total length of more than two hundred and fifty miles. The longest, the 
 Marcian, extends to two springs in the valley of the Arno, a distance 
 of sixty-one miles ; and for more than six miles, near Rome, it was 
 carried on arches, stupendous lines of which are still to be seen on the 
 left of the Alban road. 
 
 38. The ruins that still exist of the public buildings of the im- 
 perial age the amphitheatres, theatres, temples, baths, porticos, and 
 triumphal arches which embellished not only the capital and Italy, 
 but all the Roman provinces, would alone be sufficient to prove that 
 those countries were once the seat of a wealthy, polite, and powerful 
 empire. Until the time of Augustus, Roman architecture, formed 
 upon Grecian models, exhibited little originality of invention ; but 
 the great extent demanded for the Roman amphitheatres, circuses, 
 and similar edifices, gave rise to a new style of building, the distin-
 
 756 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAET IIL 
 
 guishing feature of which was the union of the arch with the Grecian 
 orders. In the amphitheatre, which was best calculated for the dis- 
 play of the new style, vaults rose above vaults in magnificent gal- 
 leries, and the huge fabric was adorned by beautiful Grecian colon- 
 nades. Another change in style was the mixture of the Ionic and 
 Corinthian, which formed a nfcw order, called the Roman or Com- 
 posite. 
 
 39. In sculpture and painting, the Romans discovered but little 
 nationality of art, as their subjects were almost invariably borrowed 
 from the mythology and legendary history of the Grecians, to the 
 exclusion of scenes from the annals or poetical traditions of their 
 own nation. Still these arts, especially that of sculpture, were culti- 
 vated with considerable success by the Romans of the imperial age ; 
 and, as exponents of thought and national character, the existing re- 
 mains of them are highly valuable. The Laocoon and the Apollo 
 Belvidere, works of Roman art which exhibit the perfection of sculp- 
 ture, proudly vie in design with the sublimest conceptions of a Virgil 
 or a Homer, and rival, in execution, the skill of a Praxit' les or a 
 PhflT ias. 
 
 40. A knowledge of the kind and degree of education obtained by 
 the great mass of the Roman people would be highly desirable ; but 
 on this point our information is quite limited. It appears, however, 
 that, both in early times, and throughout the period of the empire, 
 the Romans had public schools, which were frequented by boys and 
 girls of all ranks. Reading, writing, and a little arithmetic, were 
 the only branches taught in them ; and here the instruction of the 
 common people ended ; but the children of the higher classes, who 
 were able to obtain private tutors, passed through several subsequent 
 courses of learning. First, the elements of Greek and Latin were 
 taught ; for the former was the natural idiom of science, while the 
 exclusive use of the latter was maintained in the administration of 
 civil as well as military government ; and every person of liberal 
 education was expected to be conversant with both. After the 
 mastery of the languages, the student received lessons in rhetoric, 
 philosophy, and general literature. 
 
 41. Until the time of Vespasian no professorships received public 
 endowment, the schools being supported by the fees of tuition. Ves- 
 pasian, however, conferred salaries on a few teachers of literature and 
 eloquence ; Adrian extended the scheme ; and Antoninus Pius intro- 
 duced, generally, into the principal towns, both in Italy and the
 
 CBAP. VIIL] THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 757 
 
 provinces, seminaries in which all the higher branches of education 
 were taught by salaried professors. Mathematics, however, and the 
 natural sciences, were almost universally neglected ; and no teacher 
 of these branches ever received a public salary. a Bookshops, con- 
 taining for sale manuscript copies of books, first appeared at Rome 
 in the time of Augustus ; and the business of a copyist soon after be- 
 came a profession of considerable importance. Private libraries of 
 considerable extent had accumulated in Rome as early as the time 
 of Cicero. The first public library in Rome was the celebrated one 
 which belonged to Aristion of Athens, and which was captured by 
 Sylla, and placed by him in the capitol. Afterwards, the public 
 libraries of Rome increased to twenty-nine in number under the 
 emperors : the most important of which were those founded by 
 Augustus, Vespasian, and Trajan. 
 
 V. 
 
 42. The Augustan, or Golden age of Roman literature, to which, 
 the attention of the reader has been called in a previous chapter, was 
 followed by an era commonly called the Silver Age, 
 
 1-1 !/ i / THE SILVER 
 
 which was marked by a style quite inferior to the former, AGK OF 
 and a taste considerably corrupted. " About the time ROMAN 
 of the death of Augustus, and in the reign of Tiberius," 
 says Niebuhr, " the rhetoricians exercised a paramount influence 
 upon all branches of literature. Their only object was to produce 
 effect by sophistical niceties, and a bombastic phraseology ; thoughts 
 and substance were considered of secondary importance. " b Gibbon 
 says that although the love of letters was fashionable among the 
 subjects of Adrian and the Antonines, yet " the name of poet was 
 almost forgotten ; that of orator was usurped by the sophists ; and 
 a cloud of critics, of compilers, of commentators, darkened the face 
 of learning." The Greek writers, who seemed already to have occu- 
 pied every place of honor, were still the models that were faintly 
 copied by the Romans ; and as freedom of thought and expression, 
 especially on philosophical and political subjects, could seldom be in- 
 dulged in with safety under the arbitrary rule of the emperors, a de- 
 cided check was thereby placed on the most elevated kind of prose 
 composition. 
 
 43. Yet in the period of the decline of Roman literature, and the 
 decay of Roman greatness, there are names that would have done 
 
 a. Spalding's Italy, i. 3-24. b. Niebuhr, v. lect. Ixiii. c. Gibbon, i. 36.
 
 758 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 honor to a better age ; although perhaps there are few writers among 
 them 3f original genius, or of a style really eloquent. During the 
 Silver Age of Roman literature, which embraced a period of one 
 hundred and eighty years, from the death of Augustus to that of 
 Marcus Aurelius, the most distinguished of the Roman writers are 
 the poets Lucan and Juvenal, Seneca the moralist and philoso- 
 pher, Pliny the naturalist, Quintilian the rhetorician, and Tacitus the 
 historian. 
 
 44. Of Lucan, whom Gibbon calls " the inimitable," and Niebuhr, 
 the " bad poet," the most opposite opinions have been entertained. 
 His principal work, and the only one that has come down to us, the 
 Pharsalia, describes the wars of Caesar and Pompey, and depicts with 
 great vividness the death struggle of the Roman Republic, in which 
 the moral greatness of Cato rises in pious serenity above the elements 
 of discord and the wreck of freedom. This poem, although it has 
 heavy faults of plan and style, for which great allowance should be 
 made to the youth of the author, has been characterized by a late 
 critic a as "one of the grandest in any language." Lucan died in his 
 twenty-sixth year, a victim to the tyranny of Nero. 
 
 45. Seneca, the paternal uncle of Lucan, whose tutorship of Nero, 
 and his murder by the tyrant, have given additional interest to his 
 writings, was the most remarkable man of the age in which be lived. 
 Professedly a stoic philosopher, he was an earnest advocate of ascetic 
 severity, and a valuable instructor of mankind ; yet he failed to 
 practice the lessons which he inculcated upon others. He is charged 
 with unbounded avarice, and a violent rage for popularity, while his 
 private life was confessedly irregular, and far from being commend- 
 able. The style of Seneca is antithetical, forced, and unnatural ; 
 yet he was the best writer of his age, and although his example 
 doubtless precipitated the fall of Roman letters, yet his moral in- 
 fluence was for the time beneficial. Juvenal, distinguished as an 
 eminent satirical poet, died at an advanced age in the reign of Adrian. 
 He painted, with a bold and free hand, the vices and follies of the 
 times ; and although not a purely classical writer, he was a man of 
 probity, and worthy of a better age. 
 
 46. Pliny the Elder, called also the Naturalist^ wrote a great 
 number of books upon various subjects ; but the last and most im- 
 portant of his writings, was his Natural History. This was a work 
 of great erudition, containing extracts from more than two hundred 
 
 a. Spalding. See his Italy and the Italian Islands, i. 131.
 
 CHAP. VIII.] THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 759 
 
 volumes; but the plan is imperfect, and the execution exhibits a 
 great want of discrimination in the selection of materials, for tales 
 the most marvellous and unnatural are related without once having 
 their probability questioned. Pliny was little more than a mere 
 compiler, and one often unacquainted with the things about which 
 he collects the opinions of others ; yet his work is a treasure of Latin 
 terms and expressions, without the aid of which it would have been 
 almost impossible to reestablish the Latin language. Pliny lost his 
 life by the same eruption of Vesuvius in which the cities, Hercula- 
 neum and Pompeii, were destroyed. 
 
 47. Quintilian the rhetorician, a native of Spain, who wrote near 
 the close of the first century, and in the early part of the second, was 
 the restorer of a better taste in literature, and the most classical 
 writer of the Silver Age. The work which has immortalized his 
 name is entitled " The Institutes of Oratory," an elaborate treatise 
 on the rhetorical art, exhibiting results of a refined critical spirit, 
 of a pure taste, of extensive and varied reading, and a long course of 
 practical experience. 
 
 48. Tacitus, a cotemporary of Quintilian, whose lectures on rhet- 
 oric he probably attended, was one of Rome's best historians, and in 
 some respects superior to Livy himself. His principal works are his 
 life of Agricola, his annals, and his history ; the latter two embrac- 
 ing a period in Roman history of eighty-one years, from the death 
 of Augustus to that of Domitian, although portions of both works 
 have been lost. The style of Tacitus is peculiarly distinguished for 
 that brevity which is sparing of words and prodigal of sentiment ; 
 and hence his laconic manner has rendered him frequently obscure 
 to modern readers, where he might have been perfectly clear to a 
 scholar of his own times. He has been called the Father of Phi- 
 losophical History ; but his criticisms relate more to individual 
 character, than to subjects of political speculation. 
 
 VI. 
 
 49. If we turn to Greek literature in the period of the Silver 
 Age, we find, amid the general darkness, a few isolated 
 
 _ . GREEK LITK- 
 
 authors whose names deserve honorable mention, in the RATURE 
 reign of Augustus we meet with Dionysius of Halicar- DURING THE 
 nassus, an excellent critic and rhetorician, but only a 
 tolerable historian. He wrote, in Greek, a history of the Roman 
 people for the use of his countrymen ; but with all his study and re-
 
 760 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 search he wus imperfectly acquainted with the Roman constitution. 
 His critical works arc valuable. Dionysius was succeeded by the 
 geographer Strabo, who was born at Pontus, in Asia Minor. His 
 great work, which appears to have occupied a considerable portion 
 of a long life, not only shows a vast amount of erudition for the 
 times, but bears on every page evidence of a philosophical and re- 
 flecting mind. Both Dionysius and Strabo, however, belong more 
 nearly to the Augustan than to the Silver Age. 
 
 50. After Strabo, we meet with the excellent and amiable Plutarch, 
 a native of Chssronea in Bosotia, who was born about the middle of 
 the first century. Of the several productions of this writer, that to 
 which he owes his celebrity is his " Lives" or biographical sketches 
 of distinguished Greeks and Romans, which contain a treasure of 
 practical philosophy, of morality, and of sound and useful maxims, 
 the fruit of a long experience. In the age of the Antonines, a period 
 which witnessed a revival of Greek literature, we meet with Lucian, 
 celebrated for his satirical " Dialogues," exposing the vices, follies, 
 and delusions of the times ; with Galen the physician, and Pausanias 
 a traveller and geographical writer ; but of the whole school of Greek 
 rhetoricians of this period it has been justly said that there is little 
 substance in what they spoke and wrote. 
 
 VII. 
 
 51. The later period of Roman history, from the time of the 
 Antonines to the fall of the Western Empire, was nearly a blank in 
 
 ROMAN the native literature and philosophy of Italy, if we ex 
 HISTORY ce pt the dawning of jurisprudence as a science, which 
 TMK OF THE was honored by the worthy names of Papinian and Ul- 
 ANTONINES. pian. Almost the only light that shone upon this age 
 of decay was derived from a new philosophical school, that of the 
 Latter Platonists, or Eclectics, whose seat was Alexandria. The 
 Electics, taking the opinions of Plato concerning God, the human 
 soul, and things invisible, as the basis of their system, and as not in- 
 consistent with the spirit and genius of the Christian doctrine, col- 
 lected their dogmas from every school, and attempted a coalition of 
 all sects and systems, by maintaining that the great principles of 
 truth were to be found equally in all, and that they differed from 
 each other only in the mode of expressing them. In conformity to 
 this plan, by removing the fables of the priests from Paganism, and 
 the comments and interpretations of the Apostles from Christianity,
 
 CHAP. VIII.] THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 761 
 
 and by reducing the whole history of the heathen gods to an allegory, 
 they made all the religions of the world harmonize with each other. 
 This plausible system, which was adopted by many pagan writers, 
 and by some of the Christian fathers, extended rapidly for a time, 
 and was the source of innumerable errors and corruptions in the 
 Christian Church. Ammonius, Plotinus, and Porphyry, were the 
 orignators, or early advocates, of the new school. 
 
 52. This re-awakening of philosophy in the East appears to have 
 been the cause of a brief revival of Grecian literature, which shone 
 forth the brighter from the growing intensity of the surrounding 
 darkness. Among the Greek writers of this period may be mentioned, 
 as the most conspicuous, the names of Longinus the critic and rhet- 
 orician, author of the celebrated treatise on " The Sublime" Arrian 
 the annalist and philosopher ; Diogenes Laertius, who wrote the Lives 
 of the philosophers ; and the historians Herodian and Dio Cassius ; 
 but none of these, except Longinus, belong to the first class of writers, 
 although they were such as the dull Latin literature of the period 
 had nothing to match. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 53. As we approach the period of the dissolution of the "Western 
 empire, the causes of decline increase, and the darkness 
 
 which settles on the minds and morals of the people grows CAUSES OF 
 rapidly more intense. About the time of Theodosius, DKOLINK - 
 education for the many had almost entirely died away, while for the 
 few it seemed suddenly to become more complete in the establish- 
 ment, at Rome, by Theodosius, of a regular college, which numbered 
 thirty-one professors. But this was only the evanescent glare of the 
 expiring luminary. Even before this time public morals had become 
 as depraved as they well could be, and the little of pure Christianity 
 that was diffused among the western Romans, was unable to stem the 
 overwhelming torrents of vice and misery. With the external and 
 more immediate causes of the ruin of the empire the irruptions of 
 the barbarians the reader is already acquainted. By the time of 
 Diocletian, the increasing diversity of interests, feelings, and preju- 
 dices, in the widely-distant provinces, the frequency of rebellions, and 
 the inroads of the barbarians, so multiplied the cares of government, 
 that the burden seemed too great for one man to sustain, and a di- 
 vision of the Roman world into the Eastern and Western empires, ap- 
 peared necessary to internal security as well as foreign defence.
 
 762 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 But nothing could arrest the progress of decay, for Roman virtue 
 was extinct, the heart was rotten to the core. The nation of Ro- 
 man citizens and soldiers had become confounded with the millions 
 of provincials with the Spaniard, the Briton, the Gaul, the Syrian, 
 the Egyptian, and the Moor who had received the name, without 
 adopting the spirit, of Romans. The stern old Roman soldiery had 
 given place to mercenary legions levied among the barbarians of the 
 frontiers ; the languages and dialects spoken in a Roman camp emu- 
 lated the confusion of Babel ; and by the tumultuary election of a 
 Roman army, a Goth, a Syrian, or an Arab, was exalted to the 
 throne, and invested with despotic power over the conquests and over 
 the country of the Scipios. When the unity of the empire was de- 
 stroyed, and the identity oi*Rome as the mistress of nations was lost 
 in the founding of the Byzantine capital, the old attachments that 
 clustered around the " Eternal City," and that were affixed to the 
 Roman name, were gone forever ; a voiceless forum and a deserted 
 senate only imbittered the remembrance of past glories and virtues ; 
 and the Roman world, swayed from the centre of its attraction, was 
 already fast breaking into fragments when the inundations of the 
 barbarians, sweeping like a torrent over Italy, served to complete, 
 rather than hasten, the general ruin. 
 
 54. Of the gloomy forebodings, and the despair of their country, 
 that filled the minds of the more intelligent and virtuous citizens in 
 the last age of the empire, we have a multitude of evidence in the 
 writings of the historians, lawgivers, statesmen, philosophers, and di- 
 vines, of that period. From the opposite extremes of the pagan and 
 the Christian world, we select two examples which portray in vivid 
 colors the saddening degeneracy of the times, although the lamenta- 
 tions are called forth by very different views and principles. Sym'- 
 machus, the heathen pontiff, augur, and prefect of Rome, indulges 
 the following reflections in a letter to a friend. " You complain," 
 says he, " that I send you no narrative of public events. What if I 
 answer, it is better to let them pass unnoticed ? The ancient oracles 
 have grown dumb : in the grotto of Cumae are read no mystic char- 
 acters : no voice issues from the tree of Dodona : no chanted verse 
 is heard amid the vapors of the Delphic cell. And we, mortal and 
 impotent, who owe our very existence to the act of a religious demi- 
 god, may most wisely learn from the silence of heaven, and ponder 
 in quiet over that sad history of our race, for which the book of 
 prophecy has no longer a leaf." Such was the lament of the chani-
 
 CHAP. VIIL] THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 7G3 
 
 pion of the old faith. Saint Ambrose, the Christian bishop of Milan 
 in the fourth century, and one of the latest and most distinguished of 
 what are denominated the Fathers of the Church, expresses similar 
 feelings in a different tone. He describes a journey in which are 
 passed successively Bologna, a Modena, Reggio, a and Piacenza. a 
 Those ancient cities lie half ruined, and half unpeopled : among the 
 valleys of the Apennines stretch wide uncultivated wastes, where of 
 old the land bloomed like a garden ; and on the surrounding heights, 
 the site of once flourishing villages is marked by mouldering and 
 roofless walls. The pious churchman speaks of the grief which we 
 feel for departed friends, as softened by our trust that they have 
 passed to a purer life ; but for his country he has no such hopes of 
 renewed existence : her prosperity is sunk forever. 
 
 " Ob Rome ! my country ! city of the soul ! 
 The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, 
 Lone mother of dead empires ! and control 
 In their shut breasts their petty misery. 
 What are our woes and sufferance ? Come and see 
 The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way 
 O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye ! 
 Whose agonies are evils of a day 
 A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay." 
 
 Childe Harold. 
 
 6. Pronounced Bo-lone -y a, Redge-yo, Pe-a-chen'-u.
 
 764 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART 1IL 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. Prominent subjects of history during the thousand years succeeding the 
 fall of the Roman empire. A Dark Age. 2. The two different views that may be taken of it. 
 What the former requires. The latter. Importance of the latter. 
 
 3. UNITY OF CHARACTER IN ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. Among the Jews in Egypt in India, 
 China, and Asia Minor. Character of Grecian acivilization. 
 
 Great diversity of the Elements 'of Modern Civilization. 
 
 4. Theocracy, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, &c. 5. ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES DERIVED 
 FROM THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Municipal corporations. Despotic rule. (5. THE CHRISTIAN 
 CHURCH how made to cooperate in the advance of modern civilization. 7. THE BARBARIAN 
 WORLD individual liberty, and military protection. 8. The three kinds of society existing at 
 the time of the fall of the Roman empire. The four principles growing out of them. The 
 claims of monarchy of theocracy of aristocracy of democracy. Basis of the claims of each. 
 9. UNSETTLED CONDITION OK INDIVIDUALS. Freemen vassals freedmen slaves. Prop- 
 erty. 10. Unsettled condition OF GOVERNMENTS AND STATES. 
 
 Social developments arising out of the elements enumeratea. 
 
 II. IMPULSES TOWARDS AN ESCAPE FROM BARBARISM. Great men unforgotten glories of 
 civilized Rome compilation of laws. INFLUENCES OF THE CHURCH. Laws of the Christianized 
 Visigoths. 12. The Church did little for the advancement of the individual : more for the 
 melioration of the social condition of man. Political influence of the Church on the side of 
 despotism. 13. Increasing internal tranquillity, and rise of the Feudal System. 14. THE TWO- 
 FOLD INFLUENCES OF FEUDALISM. 15. Decline of the municipal system. The cities begin to 
 regain their importance. They are oppressed by the feudal lords. GENERAL INSURRECTION 
 OF THE CITIES in the eleventh century. 16. The cities prevail. Their relations to the king 
 and the feudal lords rise of a "Third Estate" and the beginning of the struggle between 
 monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. 17. Different views of this struggle. On what the 
 final triumph of democracy must depend. 18. EFFECTS OF THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THE 
 CITIES. Government of the cities. Growing inequalities among the citizens. The burgesses. 
 Confederations among the cities. The Hanseatic League. Its power and wealth. The Italian 
 cities. The Lombard and German war. 19. EFFECTS OF THE CRUSADES. Spirit in which 
 they were undertaken. European and national character of the enterprise shared in by all 
 classes. 20. Tendency to more enlarged views. 21. Illustrations given by Guizot. 22. Changes 
 in the social state during the crusades. 
 
 Attempts at Centralization of Power. 
 
 23. First: ATTEMPT AT THEOCRATIC ORGANIZATION. 24. Three-fold causes of the failure. 
 Popular reaction against the Church in the thirteenth century. The Albigenses. Pope 
 Boniface VIII. 25. Second : ATTEMPTS AT DEMOCRATIC ORGANIZATION. Partial success ill 
 Italy. Failure in the south of France. Results in Switzerland Flanders the German 
 Leagues. 26. Third: ATTEMPT AT A UNION OF THE VARIOUS ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY: in the 
 States-General of France : in the Cortes of Spain and Portugal : in Germany. 27. Success of 
 the union in England alone. 28. Fourth.: SUCCESSFUL ATTEMPTS AT MONARCHICAL ORGANIZA- 
 TION. The progress of centralization in the fifteenth century. 29. Gradual consolidation ot 
 the French monarchy. Its internal regulations. 30. Consolidation of the Spanish monarchy. 
 Of the German empire. Concentration of the Italian Republics. Subsequent history of Italy.
 
 CHAP. IX.] THE MIDDLE AGKS 765 
 
 31. Centralizati>n of powers in England. ---32. The general tendency towards absolute mon- 
 archy. How monarchy contributed to the civilization of Europe. 
 
 33. MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL CHANGES IN THE FIFTKENTII CENTURY. Church reforms. 
 The great schism in the Church. John Huss and Jerome of Prague. 34. REVIVAL or LITERA- 
 TURE. Italian literature. 33. INVENTIONS. 36. DISCOVERIES. 
 
 I. 
 
 1. The prominent subjects of history during the thousand years 
 that succeeded the fall of the Western empire of the Romans, after 
 the great deluge of barbarism had overwhelmed Europe, are the 
 rise, establishment, and decline, of the Saracen empire the rise of 
 the monarchy of the Franks the beginnings of English history the 
 Feudal system Chivalry and the Crusades. These are the promi- 
 nent outward events and subjects the surface life which historical 
 narrative elucidates. This is, emphatically, as it has been called, a 
 DARK AGE in its general features, an age of ignorance and super- 
 stition ; an age of passion, and romance ; a period of storms, and 
 strife, lit up by an occasional meteor glare that only renders the 
 darkness more visible ; but in its troubled and tempestuous waste we 
 are to search for the elements of modern civilization. 
 
 2. Two different, but not opposing views, may be taken of this 
 broad field of history. Its barren Zaharas its few fertile oases 
 its desolating barbarian inroads its now mouldering castles, wrecks 
 of feudal power its proud barons its courtly knights its crusading 
 hosts its chivalric honor, love, and enthusiasm may be so portrayed 
 as to present a vivid panorama of the whole, finished to the sight ; 
 or, on the other hand, we may pass behind the scenes, and examine 
 the picture in all its stages of growth its elements, combinations, 
 groupings, and colorings and the machinery that moves the whole. 
 The former requires the artistic labor of the painter or sculptor, 
 the latter that of the anatomist : the results of the former may be 
 the most entertaining ; but to those already familiar with the general 
 subject, the latter, assuredly, must be the most instructive and use- 
 ful ; and without the knowledge which it presents, the modern student 
 can have no just and comprehensive views of the great struggles for 
 power that have since transpired, and that are now transpiring, on 
 the vast theatre of European politics. 
 
 II. 
 
 3. When we look at the kind and degree of civilization that pro- 
 vailed in the States of antiquity, we find there, almost universally,
 
 766 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 an exceeding unity of character some one general, prevailing, prin- 
 ciple, that influenced all the developments of society. 
 
 UNITY OF ^ * 
 
 IN ANCIENT 
 * ' 
 
 CHARACTER Thus, among the Jews, the theocratic system prevailed, 
 imposing upon society its laws, and giving a great degree 
 of simplicity and unity to the character of the people. 
 In Egypt a religion of fixed rites and ceremonies produced monotony, 
 and threw around society a barrier beyond which civilization could 
 make no farther progress. Similar results are observable among the 
 religious people of early India, and the Chinese, and the same ten- 
 dencies to unity in the character of civilization are the legitimate 
 effects of any one all-absorbing principle or system to which the 
 people yield implicit deference. Among the commercial republics 
 which covered the coasts of Phoenicia and Asia Minor the democratic 
 principle prevailed, impressing its character upon the institutions, 
 habits, and manners, of the people. In Greece, the combined social 
 and municipal principle, as exhibited in the numerous independent 
 and often rival cities that covered the land, like so many families 
 having separate interests, feelings, and sympathies, was at the basis 
 of a civilization the most rapid and remarkable the world has ever 
 witnessed. 
 
 III. 
 
 Great diversity of tlie Elements of Modern Civilization. 
 
 4. When, however, we turn to modern Europe, we find there, 
 during the Middle Ages, a widely different state of things in the 
 prodigious diversity of all those ideas and sentiments, principles, 
 feelings, opinions, and systems, which form the elements of society. 
 Theocracy, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, with numerous 
 gradations of each, are found side by side ; and these principles, ever 
 active, ever jostling each other, each striving after superiority, all 
 modified by the collisions which they encountered, and no one power 
 or system capable of excluding the rest, have combined, with the 
 diversities in religion and morals, in literature and the arts, to con- 
 stitute modern European civilization as it now exists. If we would 
 understand and appreciate the true character of that civilization, we 
 must investigate the origin of this variety of the elements of social 
 organization, follow them in their constant struggles for power, and 
 analyze with care their results and tendencies. 
 
 5. For the earliest elements of modern European civilization it is 
 natural that we should look to the period of the dissolution of the
 
 CHAP. IX.] THE MIDDLE AGES. 767 
 
 Roman empire, that we may learn what the ancient world bequeathed 
 to the modern. Greece, from its earliest annals, down _. 
 
 ^ fc-LLMr^TARY 
 
 to the time of its conquest by the Romans, was divided PRINCIPLES 
 
 DERIVED 
 
 into a large number of petty States, whose governments 
 
 J ' FROM THE 
 
 were little more than city corporations. a The federal ROMAN 
 tie between the States was always weak ; and the city, EMPIRE. 
 which composed the State, was the point towards which the best 
 affections of the citizens centered. The government of Rome was, 
 in its origin, a mere city corporation : the numerous Italian nations 
 that surrounded Rome were nothing more than confederations of 
 cities : in the Gauls and in Spain the entire population was con- 
 centrated in large fortified towns ; and the Roman dominion was en- 
 larged by the conquest and founding of cities, that often assumed the 
 rank of nations. The cities conquered had once been little free re- 
 publics, like that of Rome, and when they became incorporated into 
 the Roman world, their national rights, or rights of sovereignty only, 
 were transferred to the central government, and Rome reigned over 
 a vast number of municipalities. Everywhere there was an almost 
 total absence of a rural population : the numerous churches, baronial 
 castles, country seats, and villages, that sprung up in the Middle 
 Ages, were unknown ; and the country was tilled by the dweilers in 
 cities ; while slaves alone, with their overseers, resided on the sur- 
 rounding plantations. The Roman world was a vast system of mu- 
 nicipal corporations, having few points of cohesion, and with local 
 ties far stronger than national affinities ; all attempts to form the 
 whole into one general State were unavailing ; it was feebly held 
 together by the despotic administration of the empire ; and when it 
 broke in pieces, the incoherent assemblage of municipal republics 
 was resolved into the elements of which it had been composed ; and 
 all the monuments of civilization which Rome bequeathed to the 
 moderns were strongly impressed with the municipal character, 
 " The Roman world had been formed of cities, and to cities again it 
 returned." 1 " But with the habits of independent thought and action, 
 and the principles of political liberty engendered by an immediate 
 share in the regulations of city government, there was associated the 
 idea of the majesty and power of the empire ; and with that the 
 deferential respect paid to the name of emperor. On the one hand, 
 growing out of the system of municipal rule, there was the iude- 
 pendence of personal respect, based on the real self-importance of 
 
 a. See p. 70. b. Guizot. History of Civilization in Europe, p. 48.
 
 768 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III 
 
 the individual, as a citizen ; and on the other, growing out of the ex- 
 ercise of absolute power, there was the principle of order, and the' 
 principle of servitude. The municipal system and despotic rule 
 personal liberty and political servitude combined were the two 
 living principles that survived the wreck of the Roman world, and 
 that have left their impress on every feature of modern European 
 civilization. 
 
 6. A still more important connecting link, however, between the 
 THE old Roman empire and the barbarian world that arose 
 
 CHRISTIAN on its ruins, was the institution called the Christian 
 " CH ' Church not the mere belief, the personal opinions, the 
 individual convictions, that form our idea of the spirit or essence of 
 Christianity, but the Church, with its magistracy of priests, bishops, 
 and deacons ; and a system of clerical government that gave it a 
 separate existence, independently of the society over which it ruled. 
 In the West, the Church was able to withstand the barbarian inva- 
 sions, and even to make numerous and powerful converts in the ranks 
 of the enemies of the empire ; and in the East, in the times of 
 Theodosius and Justinian, and afterwards in the West, we find that 
 the clergy were everywhere elevated to power, and that they general- 
 ly became the chief magistrates in the city corporations. An ecclesi- 
 astical municipal system succeeded that of the Roman world, and 
 prepared the way for the free cities and petty republics that over- 
 spread Italy, and, to a considerable extent, other countries also, 
 during the Middle Ages. Thus at a time when society seemed on 
 the point of being overwhelmed by physical force, a power resting 
 entirely upon moral influences, which proclaimed a law above all 
 human law, was brought in to preserve it, and made to cooperate in 
 the advance of modern civilization. The Church itself gained a vast 
 accession of strength by the consideration thus attached to it, and 
 with accumulated force reacted upon the materials of social order by 
 which it was surrounded. 
 
 7. To these elements of civilization derived from the Church and 
 THK *^ e Roman empire, the barbarians added that strong 
 
 BARBARIAN love of individual liberty so universal in savage life a 
 TORLD. f ee l| n g O f personal independence before unknown dif- 
 fering from Roman freedom as being the personal liberty of the man, 
 rather than the political liberty of the citizen. A second element of 
 civilization derived from the barbarians was the strong tie of military 
 protection that graduated brotherhood in arms that existed between
 
 CHAP. IX.] THE MIDDLE AGES. 769 
 
 a chieftain and his followers -which was the beginning of a subordina- 
 tion that led to a feudal aristocracy, and eventually established the 
 relationship between sovereign and vassal. 
 
 8. At the time of the fall of the Roman empire we find, therefore, 
 as the elements of future social order throughout central and West- 
 ern Europe, three kinds of society existing, municipal, Christian, 
 and barbarian, each differing from the other ; and growing out of 
 these we early detect the various principles of monarchy, theocracy, a 
 and democracy, all existing together, and neither prevailing over the 
 others, although each has in later da}-s claimed for itself an undivided 
 share in the original formation of European society. Monarchy has 
 asserted that the German kings, in the person of Charlemagne and 
 his successors, inherited all the rights of the Roman emperors : theo- 
 cracy, in the person of the Church of Rome, claimed the right of 
 governing society, on the pretensions of her sacred mission and di- 
 vine sanction : aristocracy declared that, at the downfall of the Ro- 
 man empire, the conquering nation, forming afterwards the nobility, 
 alone possessed authority, and established an aristocratic organiza- 
 tion, which thus became the primitive and genuine form of European 
 government ; and democracy declared that, in the fifth century, so- 
 ciety was ruled by the assemblies of freemen that free institutions 
 first arose on the ruins of the empire, and that kings and nobles af- 
 terwards enriched themselves by the spoils of this primitive liberty. 
 Each of these principles has claimed the right to rule, by virtue of 
 its supposed priority to the others, and its unopposed adoption ; 
 while each, as if conscious that force is no ground of title, disclaims 
 its establishment as the offspring of violence. 
 
 9. As no general principle nothing like stability prevailed in 
 the social system of this early period, there was an equal variety, and 
 a want of permanency, in the condition of individuals. 
 
 1 1 1 1 A 1 1-e J C 11 l-l- UNSETTLED 
 
 Freemen, who held their life and property in full lib- CONDITION 
 erty ; vassals, who owed fealty and service to their F INDI- 
 patrons ; freedmen, who had been released from the 
 bondage of servitude ; and slaves, with all the marks of their sub- 
 jection upon them, were found side by side ; but the relations in 
 
 a. The terra theocr/ntfi for want of a better, is used in this chapter, on the authority of Guizot 
 in his "History of Civilization," to denote, simply, Ecclesiastical or Church government. Al- 
 though theocracy means "government of a state by the immediate direction of God," yet as 
 the Church of Rome then the only Church claimed the right to govern by divine sanction, 
 there is no impropriety in designating that government as theocratical, provided the correc* 
 meaning be attached to the term. There has been but one genuine theocracy on the earth- 
 the government of the Israelites. 
 
 49
 
 770 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAET III 
 
 which those classes stood to each other were not fixed and uniform, 
 for freemen were daily becoming vassals, and vassals were shaking 
 off the yoke of patronage, and returning to the class of freemen : 
 everywhere society was in motion, and no rank or class of persons 
 long continued the same. Property was in the same unsettled con- 
 dition, some estates being allodial, or entirely free, others beneficiary, 
 or held by various degrees of tenure, all marking the period of 
 transition from the wandering life to a more advanced state of civil- 
 ization. 
 
 10. In the different systems of government that struggled for su- 
 premacy, there was no uniformity no fixedness of character : the 
 conditions of fealty due to the baronial aristocracy were almost in- 
 finitely diversified ; while free institutions often sunk into decay from 
 
 , the neglect of those who should have supported them 
 
 OF GOVERN" *-* * 
 
 MEXTS AND States, created, suppressed, united, and divided, by a 
 STATES. thousand circumstances of personal ambition, conquest, 
 or alliance, had seldom any definite limits ; nations and races were 
 confusedly intermingled ; and a strange variety of idioms existed in 
 the place of the systematic languages of Greece and Rome. It 
 must not be supposed that when the Roman empire fell, the great 
 movement of nations was over ; for during five centuries the German 
 and Slavonian tribes, pressing upon the Rhine and the Danube, and 
 the Saracens, attacking various points on the Mediterranean, kept 
 the interior of Europe in such a state of continued ferment, that it 
 was impossible for society to acquire any degree of permanence. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Social developments arising out of the elements enumerated. 
 
 11. We have enumerated the elements of which European society 
 was composed soon after the fall of the Roman empire, and we now 
 proceed to consider what social developments, and what influences on 
 
 IMPULSES the progress of civilization arose out of them. During the 
 TOWARDS long night of darkness from the fifth to the fifteenth cen- 
 FROM B\R- tury, the impulses towards an escape from barbarism were 
 BARISM. numerous. Amidst the chaos of universal disorder a 
 few great <aen appeared, as Alfred the Great and Charlemagne, who 
 had aspirations for a better state of things, and who labored to civil- 
 ize the nations they governed : the glories of civilized Rome were 
 not unknown, nor entirely forgotten, by the nations that had over'
 
 CHAP. IX.] THE MIDDLE AGES. 771 
 
 whelmed her : between the sixth and the eighth century are recorded 
 the first attempts of our barbarian ancestors to bring society under 
 the authority of general and fixed principles, by compilations of the 
 laws of nearly all the European nations ; and the Christian church, 
 a regularly organized society, embracing most of the learning of the 
 times, made unremitting efforts, in its attempts to rule over barba- 
 rism, to assimilate the surrounding world to itself. In 
 
 ^ IXFLUEXCES 
 
 Spain, before the invasion of the Saracens, the Church OF THE 
 was the chief instrument of civilization ; and in the laws CHDRCH - 
 of the Visigoths, compiled mostly by the clergy, are seen the first 
 indications of learning, philosophy, and system, that we meet with 
 in the legislation of modern Europe. Under the early barbarians, 
 each separate people, although united under the same government, 
 was judged by its own laws the Romans by one system, the Franks 
 by another but the Christianized Visigoths compelled all the free- 
 men to yield obedience to the same law. Among the barbarians 
 nearly all capital offences were punished by fines, varying according 
 to the rank of the offender ; but the Visigoths, considering the lives 
 of all men of equal worth in the eyes of the law, punished murder 
 with death. 3 - 
 
 12. For the development of the capacities of man for the ad- 
 vancement of the individual the Church evidently did but little, 
 except what was confined to the clergy themselves ; and for these she 
 established schools and colleges, and such other institutions as the 
 deplorable state of society would permit. For the melioration of 
 the social condition of man, however, her labors were highly effica- 
 cious. By her influences, the rugged manners and sentiments of the 
 great were softened ; slavery, intestine wars, and other evils of the 
 social system, were combated ; legislation was improved ; and some 
 degree of literary taste, that would, otherwise, have perished, was 
 kept alive in the world. But in a political point of view, the in- 
 fluence of the Church, as between the governing and governed, was 
 decidedly opposed to liberty. Unfortunately there prevailed in its 
 bosom a desire to rule in matters of faith apart from the convictions 
 of reason or the consent of the will ; and with this was connected the 
 attempt to establish for itself an absolute theocracy, and thus to ob- 
 tain universal dominion, both temporal and spiritual ; but, failing in 
 this, it leagued itself with temporal rulers, and sheltering itself under 
 
 a. For an intereAing abstract of the laws of the Visigoths see u History of Spain and Por- 
 tugal,'' (published by the Harpers,) vol. iv. pp. 70-89.
 
 772 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAKT IIL 
 
 their claims of absolute power, attempted to establish the 
 right of kings, at the expense of the liberty of the people. In the 
 struggles between prerogative and liberty, the Church, throughout 
 the entire period of the Middle Ages, arrayed itself on the side of 
 despotism. 
 
 13. In addition to the two-fold influences of the Church, one 
 salutary to the intellectual and moral condition of man, and the other 
 detrimental to his political condition both silently working in the 
 midst of barbarism, about the beginning of the tenth century the 
 emigration of nations had ceased, and the wandering life had declined 
 in the interior of Europe ; population, consequently, became more 
 fixed, lauded possessions more settled, and the customs which make 
 laws more uniform : all the social relations of men also assumed in- 
 creasing permanency ; their ideas and sentiments acquired a more 
 fixed character ; their roving dispositions began to yield to attach- 
 ments to place ; and at the close of the first period of barbarism, the 
 Feudal System had taken possession of European society. 
 
 14. The influences of feudalism on civilization were also two-fold. 
 To the ruling orders it gave great additional energy and indepen- 
 
 dence of character, and, as the parent of chivalry, it gave 
 
 FOLD INFLU- birth to elevated ideas and feelings, and noble develop- 
 
 ENCES OF m ents of sentiment in individuals ; and it was under this 
 
 form that the civilization of Europe began ; but at the 
 same time it was a blight upon the social condition of the masses, 
 and an obstacle to the progress of society ; it subjected the lower 
 classes to every species of lawless oppression, and everywhere op- 
 posed, not only the establishment of general order, but the extension 
 of general liberty. Feudalism and the Church were, therefore, to a 
 great extent, opposing influences upon society upon the masses 
 and it was not until the former was substantially overthrown, about 
 the beginning of the fourteenth century,, that the condition of the 
 people began to be sensibly improved. 
 
 15. With the growing influences of feudalism, the municipal sys 
 tern left by the Romans had gradually declined in importance, until, 
 about the tenth century, the towns, having no political connection 
 with the kings, or national rulers, were everywhere subjected to the 
 control of feudal lords, although exempt from the servitude of the 
 agricultural portions of community. When, however, the wandering 
 habits of the people had ceased, and society had become more per- 
 manent, the increasing activity and industry of the cities, the growth
 
 CHAP. XL] THE MIDDLE AGES. 773 
 
 of their commerce, and a corresponding advance in their wealth, re- 
 gained for them some importance, and a small portion of the power 
 which they had lost, but conferred upon the citizens little additional 
 security of person and property. Their barbarian conquerors, the 
 new proprietors of the soil, restrained from distant pillaging excur- 
 sions by the more settled state of society, redoubled their exactions 
 upon the cities within their domains, as additional means were there 
 offered for the gratification of avarice. At length the 
 
 1 11 -1 11- GENERAL 
 
 cities, borne down by oppression, the more galling on ac- IXSURREC- 
 count of the exposure of their interests to the hazard of T10N IN 
 pillage, resolved to resist the iniquitous rule of their 
 feudal masters ; and about the commencement of the eleventh cen- 
 tury they broke out into a general insurrection, although without any 
 concerted movement, which led to important changes in the condition 
 of society. 
 
 16. There had been many previous unsuccessful efforts for free- 
 dom, and even now, when the struggle was general, it was attended 
 with many vicissitudes ; but the cities prevailed ; and written treaties 
 of peace were made between them and their feudal proprietors. 
 These treaties were so many concessions or charters granted to the 
 cities, usually guaranteeing to them most of the rights and privileges 
 for which they had taken up arms. As these charters were frequent- 
 ly violated, and their articles eluded in different ways, the inter- 
 ference of royalty was often solicited, sometimes by the cities and 
 sometimes by the lords ; and a connection thus began to be formed 
 between the citizens and the king ; although the burgesses, or freemen 
 of the towns, had, as yet, acquired no additional part in the general 
 government of the country. All remained local as before ; the cities 
 were still politically attached to their feudal lords ; and the latter 
 only had any political relations with the head of the government ; 
 but a new class of society had been formed by the enfranchisement 
 if the commons ; a " third estate" began to arise in the chartered 
 corporations that covered Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 
 turies ; and that stiuggle of classes began, which has ever since con- 
 tinued in European society, the struggle between kings, lords, and 
 commons between the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the democ- 
 racy. 
 
 17. In the more civilized countries of Europe neither of these 
 classes has so far triumphed as to bring the others into subjection to 
 itself; and some writers, observing that in Asia and Egypt, the tri-
 
 774 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 umph of monarchy, aristocracy, or theocracy, has led to the system 
 of castes, and interposed a barrier to the progress of civilization, have 
 been led to attribute to the constant struggle between the three great 
 powers in European society, the wonderful energy and productive- 
 ness of modern European civilization, 1 and to predict its illimitable 
 progress. That the progress of civilization is to be onward, even 
 in Europe, despite the opposing elements of monarchy, aristocracy 
 and democracy, we do not doubt ; but our faith in man's moral des- 
 tiny forbids us to believe that the struggle is to be unending ; and 
 we confidently anticipate the period when democracy will triumph 
 although it will not be until her cause relies for its main support 
 upon the general intelligence and virtue of the people. With them, 
 universal education alone can lead to universal emancipation. 
 
 18. The enfranchisement of the cities the greatest revolution of 
 the Middle Ages was highly favorable to the progress of civiliza- 
 EFFECTS OF tiou in Europe ; but owing to the ignorance and barba- 
 
 THE ENFRAN- r i sm O f t} ie inhabitants, the government of them was still 
 
 CHISEMENT 
 
 OF THE a ver J difficult matter. The magistrates, chosen by the 
 CITIES. general assembly of the citizens, being under few restric- 
 tions, at first governed with almost arbitrary power ; so that there 
 was but little more security in these communities than there had 
 been previously under the rule of the barons. Soon there grew up, 
 under the system of privileges or monopolies granted to the trading 
 classes or merchants, a great inequality among the citizens ; and the 
 community was divided between a corps of opulent burgesses, and a 
 poor and ignorant population subject to all the errors and vices of a 
 mob. The power of government very naturally centured in the 
 wealthier class, which found itself harassed, on the one hand, by an 
 insolent and turbulent democracy, and pressed on the other by the 
 ancient feudal lord of the borough, who sought to regain the power 
 which he had lost. The situation of the superior burgesses there- 
 fore required from them a temporizing policy, which sought to ac- 
 commodate all differences without the risk of insurrection on the one 
 hand, or the danger, on the other, of being involved in a contest in 
 which the want of cordial support from the people was certain to 
 incur defeat. Excessive timidity and caution in political matters, 
 and a feeling of indifference as to the government of the nation, with 
 
 a. See Guizot's History of Civilization in Europe, Lecture VII. Alison, the historian, takes 
 the same view, and, especially, never neglects an opportunity to portray the dangers of 
 " democratic ascendency."
 
 CHAP. XL] THE MIDDLE AGES. 775 
 
 a consequent modesty of pretensions to the right of taking part in 
 the same, was the character of the burgesses in the twelfth and thir- 
 teenth centuries. This timid and cautious spirit was poorly calcu- 
 lated to raise the cities to any great degree of importance in the 
 government of the state. Confederations among the free or incor- 
 porated cities were found throughout all southern and western Eu- 
 rope ; but the free cities of Germany and Italy contributed the most 
 largely to the progress of civilization. As early as the year 1254 
 seventy cities in the south of Germany formed the Rhenish League, 
 to resist the encroachments and pretensions of the nobility : after- 
 wards aro^e the Swabian cities union ; but the most powerful of the 
 Germanic confederations was that of the Hanse towns, called the 
 Hanseatic League, formed between Lubeck, Hamburg, Bremen, 
 Stettin, and other cities, numbering sixty at the beginning of the 
 fourteenth century, and afterwards increased to a hundred. These 
 were all commercial cities ; and the League not only monopolized 
 the trade of the Baltic, but extended its influences to the shores of 
 the Mediterranean, and competed with the Italians in the merchan 
 dize of India. The League was also able to collect together whole 
 9eets and armies, and such was its wealth and power that its friend- 
 ship was universally sought. In Italy, as early as the middle of 
 the twelfth century, the cities of Lombardy, with Milan at their 
 head, had become extremely rich and powerful, principally by the 
 commerce which the Crusades threw into their hands ; but it was 
 only in confederated communities that they found protection against 
 the German emperor, who called himself their sovereign. From 
 1153 to 1183 the Lombard cities maintained an obstinate struggle 
 with Frederic Barbarossa ; but the former triumphed, and the em- 
 peror was compelled to renounce all prerogatives which he had hith 
 erto exercised over the internal administration of towns. The Lom- 
 bard and German war, says an able modern writer, " was the first 
 and most noble struggle which the nations of modern Europe have 
 ever maintained against despotism." a 
 
 19. The history of the Crusades, which occupied a period of nearly 
 two hundred years, from the close of the eleventh to the EFFECT8 
 close of the thirteenth century, has been given in a OK THE 
 former chapter, but their effects upon the state of Eu- 
 ropean society remain to be noticed. From the seventh century 
 Christianity had been engaged in a contest with Mohammedanism ; 
 
 a. Sismondi's Italian Republics, ch. iii.
 
 776 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART ILL 
 
 and throughout Christian Europe the strongest feelings of hatred 
 and aversion were entertained towards the infidel believers in the 
 Koran, so that when the first crusade was preached, the seeds of the 
 great moral movement that followed had already been sown, and the 
 crusades were but the continuation of the great struggle that had 
 commenced several centuries before. They were the first great 
 movement in which all Europe was influenced by one common senti- 
 ment ; for all Europe joined in them ; and the redemption of the 
 Holy Sepulchre was made the common cause of all Christendom. 
 They were, therefore, the first enterprise that was, comprehensively, 
 European in its character ; and they furnished the first opportunity 
 of acquaintance among all the Christian nations of Europe. Their 
 effects were similar upon the different classes of society ; for the 
 king and the peasant, the lord and the vassal, the priest and the lay- 
 man, all took the same interest and the same share in them ; the 
 first swarm of crusaders was composed mostly of bands of ignorant 
 peasants, led by a hermit ; the second was led by a hundred thousand 
 mounted and mailed warriors of the feudal nobility ; and afterwards, 
 the greatest sovereigns of Europe were drawn into the general move- 
 ment. The crusades were not only European, but eminently national, 
 also, in their character ; and they were sustained by the strong hold 
 which religious belief, or, rather, religious fanaticism, had taken of 
 the human mind. > 
 
 20. During the two centuries in which European society was con- 
 vulsed by these mighty movements, the narrow horizon that had lim- 
 ited the views of all classes was enlarged ; the mists that sectional 
 prejudice and bigotry had thrown around existing institutions, and 
 opinions, once dissipated, revealed still a world beyond ; and the new 
 state of existence which was opened to the crusaders, the novelty, 
 extent, and variety of the scenes displayed to their view, and the 
 contact of mind with mind which they occasioned, contributed to let 
 in more enlarged and liberal views than had hitherto prevailed, and 
 to arouse society from the stupor and inactivity into which it had fallen. 
 
 21. The favorable change of sentiments and opinions occasioned 
 by these holy wars is well illustrated by a comparison of the cotem- 
 porary chroniclers of the first crusades with those who wrote towards 
 the end of the thirteenth century. " The former," says Guizot, " are 
 animated writers, whose imagination is excited, and who relate the 
 events of the crusade with passion ; but they are narrow-minded in 
 the extreme, without an idea beyond the little sphere in which they
 
 CHAP. XL] THE MIDDLE AGES. 777 
 
 lived ; ignorant of every science, full of prejudices, incapable of 
 forming an opinion on what was passing around them, or of the events 
 which were the subject of their narratives. In William of Tyre, one 
 of the later writers, we are surprised to find almost a modern his- 
 torian ; a cultivated, enlarged, and liberal mind ; great political in- 
 telligence, and general views and opinions upon causes and effects. 
 Other writers of this period do not confine themselves to what imme- 
 diately concerns the crusades, but describe the state of manners, the 
 geography, the religion, and natural history of the countries which 
 passed under their notice. The first crusaders speak of the Moham- 
 medans without knowing them ; they form no judgment of them ; 
 they detest them, and fight them, and nothing more. The later cru- 
 saders, even when fighting with them, no longer regard them as 
 monsters ; they sometimes eulogize their conduct and manners, and 
 exhibit an impartiality of judgment that would have filled the first 
 crusaders with surprise and horror. There is, in short, an immense 
 distance between the historians and people of the first and those of 
 the last crusades ; a distance which indicates an actual revolution in 
 the state of the human mind." 
 
 22. The social state also underwent an important change during 
 the crusades. The expenses of the feudal proprietors, in furnishing 
 and equipping themselves and their vassals for the wars, reduced 
 many of them to the necessity of selling their fiefs to the kings, or 
 their privileges to the cities ; and many of the nobles found, on their 
 return, that a great portion, of their power had been usurped during 
 their absence. The number of petty fiefs, petty domains, and petty 
 proprietors, was thus greatly diminished ; property was concentrated 
 in a small number of hands ; and everything began to tend towards 
 that centralization of power which characterized the monarchical sys- 
 tem of modern Europe from the beginning of the sixteenth to the 
 middle of the nineteenth century. 
 
 V. 
 
 Attempts at Centralization of power. 
 
 23. Before this result was accomplished there had been various 
 attempts to remodel society on the basis of some one or 1st. AT- 
 all of the elements that we have mentioned ; so as to TEMPT AT 
 
 f . , . , THEOCEATIC 
 
 form one society under one central power. Theocracy, OJ&GANIZA- 
 or the Church, attempted to bring everything into sub- TION - 
 jection to the principles and dominion of ecclesiastical authority j
 
 778 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [I>AKT III 
 
 and under the sway of Gregory the Seventh, in the latter part of the 
 eleventh century, the plan of rendering the world subservient to the 
 clergy, and the clergy to the pope, was fully developed. 11 The scheme 
 was pursued down to the thirteenth century, when the incipient spirit 
 of religious reform, and the numerous controversies between the 
 popes and the European sovereigns, compelled the Church to relin- 
 quish the design of forcing her system upon Europe, and to act only 
 upon the defensive. 
 
 24. The causes of the failure of the attempts at theocratic organi 
 zation were three-fold. The first was the purely moral and peaceful 
 nature of Christianity, which eschewed force, and whose only legitimate 
 conquests were over the souls of men. The second was the resistance 
 the Church encountered from the feudal nobility, who, when sover- 
 eigns and people had almost submitted to its domination, still pro- 
 claimed themselves, with all the lofty pride of the conquering bar- 
 barian, the legitimate possessors, proprietors, and rulers of the country. 
 The third obstacle in the way of the Church was the celibacy of the 
 clergy, who, unable to recruit their ranks from their own society, 
 were forced to let-in from the surrounding world the materials for 
 the continuance of their order. With these, many discordant ele- 
 ments gained admission ; and no society has suffered more from 
 schisms, and internal dissensions, than the Church itself. Still the 
 cause of theocratic organization seemed to prosper down to the mid- 
 dle of the thirteenth century, when a popular reaction took place 
 against the Church in almost every part of Europe. In the early 
 part of the century, the Albigenses, a republican society of religious 
 reformers in the south of France, who distinguished themselves by 
 their opposition to the discipline and ceremonies of the Roman 
 Church, had become so formidable that Pope Innocent III. author- 
 ized a holy war or crusade against them. The Albigenses were over- 
 powered, and nearly exterminated by their ruthless invaders, the 
 kicg of France and his feudal nobility. But notions similar to those 
 entertained by the Albigenses appeared in other parts of Europe ; 
 the doctrine of papal supremacy was already on the decline ; and the 
 
 a.- See also p. 246. Pope Gregory VII., known before his installation by the name of 
 Hildebrand, published a series of papal constitutions, in which he declared that the Roman 
 pontiff alone can rightly be called universal that he, and he alone, has a right to depose 
 bishops, prelates, and even emperors, and to use imperial ornaments that no book can be 
 called canonical without his authority that his sentence can be annulled by none, but that he 
 may annul the decrees of all that princes are bound to kiss his feet that the Roman Church 
 has been, is, and will continue to be, infallible ; and that whoever dissents from it ceases to be 
 a Catholic Christian.
 
 CHAP. XL] THE MIDDLE AGES. 779 
 
 arrogant pretensions of Pope Boniface VIII., which met with the 
 most decided opposition from Philip IV. of France and Edward I. 
 of England, were fatal to the papal power ; and at the opening of the 
 fourteenth century the attempt at theocratic organization had utterly 
 failed. 3 - The tranquillity that followed the troubled life of Boniface, 
 was, to the court of Rome, a political death. 
 
 25. The democratic attempts to remodel society begin with the 
 history of the free cities of Italy the Italian Republics. The feudal 
 system was never so firmly established in Italy, as in 20. AT- 
 France and Germany ; and to this circumstance may be TEMPT AT 
 
 .. ., . , ., . ,, , . , . , DEMOCRATIC 
 
 attributed the superior strength and importance which OEGANIZA . 
 the Italian towns acquired at an early period, over simi- TIOJf - 
 lar communities in other States of Europe. From the eleventh to the 
 fifteenth century the municipal system prevailed in Italy ; and during 
 this period many of the Italian Republics were blessed with a remark- 
 able degree of commercial prosperity ; but their history abounds in po- 
 litical dissensions, crimes, and misfortunes, which impeded the progress 
 of liberty ; and the want of union among them, constantly threatened 
 as they were by foreign sovereigns, prevented them from exerting 
 any important influence upon other countries. In the south of 
 France the overthrow of the Albigenses was not only the triumph of 
 papacy over religious heresies, but also of feudalism over democracy. 
 Among the mountains of Switzerland the republican organization 
 m succeeded better, the Swiss feudal nobility, allying themselves, for 
 
 a. When Boniface haughtily required the kings of France and England to abstain from tax- 
 ing the clergy, Philip spurned the demand ; and Edward, although complying, ordered hia 
 judges to admit no causes in which ecclesiastics were complainants, but to try every sail 
 brought against them, averring that those who refused to contribute to the support of the State, 
 had no claim to the protection of the law. This expedient succeeded, and the ecclesiastics 
 hastened to pay their taxes without farther compulsion. 
 
 In the long controversy between the pope and Philip the latter was supported by all classes 
 of his people even the clergy. In a papal bull addressed to the French monarch Boniface 
 says:" We desire you to know that you are subject to us ;n temporal as well as in spiritual 
 affairs ; that the appointment to benefices and prebends belongs not to you ; that if you have 
 kept benefices vacant, the profits must be reserved for the legal successors ; and if you have 
 bestowed any benefice, we declare the appointment invalid, and revoke it if executed. Those 
 Who oppose this judgment shall be dpemed heretics." 
 
 Philip, after ordering this declaration to be publicly burned, published the following mem 
 orable reply. "Philip, by the grace of God, king of the French, to Boniface, claiming to be 
 pope, little or no greeting. May it please your sublime stupidity to learn, that we are subject 
 to no person in temporal aflairs ; that the bestowing of fiefs and benefices belongs to us by 
 right of our crown ; that the disposal of the revenues of vacant sees is part of our prerogative ; 
 that our decrees, in this respect, are valid, both for the past and for the future ; and that we 
 will support, with all our power, those on whom we have bestowed, or shall bestow, benefices. 
 Those who oppose this judgment shall be deemed fools or idiots." Boniface died in the year 
 1303.
 
 780 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 the most part, with the cities, and giving to the governments of the 
 Swiss cantons that tincture of aristocracy which they retained up to 
 the early part of the nineteenth century. In the free towns of 
 Flanders, and in the German Leagues along the Ilhine, democracy 
 triumphed in the internal government of the cities ; but feudalism 
 pressed upon it from every side : in their struggles with the barons 
 the free communities lent no assistance to one another, and most of 
 these petty republics finally became absorbed in the principalities 
 of the surrounding barons. 
 
 26. After the failure of the attempts at theocratic and democratic 
 organization, there appears to have been a general tendency, for 
 SD. ATTEMPTS aw ^^ e > towards a union of the various elements of society, 
 AT A UNION . as observed in the rise of the States-General of France, 
 VARIOUS ^ e Cortes of Spain, the Assemblies of the German States, 
 ELEMENTS and the Parliament of England. In France, the States- 
 OF SOCIETY. General, first called in the year 1302, and discontinued 
 early in the next century, composed of representatives of the " third 
 estate," or of the people, together with the clergy and nobility, and 
 corresponding to the English Parliament, never acquired any im- 
 portance until it was summoned at the interesting period of the 
 opening of the French Revolution, and accomplished but little 
 towards organizing the elements of society into one united govern- 
 ment. The Cortes, or representative assemblies, of Spain, composed 
 of the nobility, dignified clergy, and representatives of towns, shared 
 largely in the legislative authority during the fourteenth century ; 
 and, down to the time of the union of the crowns of Castile and 
 Aragon, enjoyed very extensive privileges. Unfortunately, however, 
 although the crowns were united, the kingdoms were not ; for each 
 preserved its own laws and institutions ; and their mutual jealousies 
 were often converted to the destruction of the liberties of both ; and 
 when, moreover, Granada, Navarre, and Naples, were subjected to 
 the Spanish crown, the Spanish sovereign became, in a great measure, 
 independent of the Cortes of his hereditary States. The reigns of 
 Charles V. and Philip II., at a period a little later, completed the 
 extinction of all constitutional control over the acts of the sovereign. 
 The powers of the Cortes of Portugal corresponded to those of 
 Spain; but here also royalty triumphed; and the year 1697 wit- 
 nessed the last convocation of these early guardians of Portuguese 
 liberties. The attempts made in Germany to unite the various ele- 
 ments of society into one political organization were; only partially
 
 CHAP. XL] THE MIDDLE AGES. 781 
 
 successful ; and although public affairs were transacted in diets or as- 
 semblies of the great feudatories and the representatives of the free 
 cities, yet the decisions of the diet were frequently disregarded, and 
 the general government was little more than a league between many 
 independent States, whose individual systems of local administration 
 often differed radically from each other. 
 
 27. The attempts to unite the various elements of society into one 
 government fully succeeded in England alone, where the legislative 
 power has been vested, for many centuries, in the great council of par- 
 liament, consisting of the king and the three estates, that is, of the 
 king, the lords spiritual, the lords temporal, and the commons. The 
 causes that led to this intimate union of monarchy, aristocracy, theo- 
 cracy, and democracy, were gradually operating from the middle of 
 the thirteenth century, when the burgesses first took seats in parlia- 
 ment, down to the Revolution of 1G88, when the principles of the 
 constitution were clearly established. 
 
 28. Up to the beginning of the fifteenth century European nations 
 and governments, apart from England, can hardly be said to have 
 existed on a large scale ; but now, in place of the local 4TH gco 
 interests, laws, manners, and ideas, that had so long held CESSFUL AT- 
 sway, more general views began to take possession of 
 
 " .... . MONARCHICAL 
 
 society, and that process of centralization began, which ORGANIZA- 
 resulted in the reduction of all the elements of society TION - 
 to two the government and the people and the establishment of 
 the arbitrary monarchical system that prevailed over Europe during 
 the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. The fifteenth 
 century may be regarded as the threshold of modern civilization as 
 the dawn of the day in which we moderns live a day whose bright- 
 ness seems only to render more intense the darkness of the night 
 that preceded it. The developments that were made towards the 
 centralization of the powers of society during the fifteenth century 
 were but the germs of those political institutions which the three suc- 
 ceeding centuries perfected ; and at the close of this latter period we 
 shall see still another change commencing, which rapidly ushered in 
 a revolution far more important than any that had preceded it. 
 
 29. At the beginning of the fifteenth century France and England, 
 the two most important powers of Europe, were engaged in a war, 
 which resulted, after an almost uninterrupted struggle of more than 
 a hundred years, in the expulsion of the English from the continent, 
 and the enlargement and consolidation of the French people and tho
 
 782 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 French territories into one nation. Before tins war France was di- 
 vided into a number of almost independent feudal principalities, 
 which, together with the provinces vacated by the English, were now 
 united under a common monarchy ; a common patriotism had in- 
 duced the nobles, the burghers, and the peasantry, to unite in repel- 
 ling the invaders ; and France thereby gained the outer semblance 
 at least of a strength and unity, which no other European nation, 
 save England, then possessed. Internally also, at the end of this 
 period of wars, considerable progress had been made in the develop- 
 ment of the principal resources, and the regular organization of the 
 chief powers, of government. Parliaments were called more fre- 
 quently than before, the administration of justice was extended and 
 organized, a standing military force was established, and a perpetual 
 tax ordained for its support, an event fatal to the political influence 
 of the nobles, and the liberties of the people, but one which contrib- 
 uted powerfully to the permanency and strength of the government. 
 
 30. Events of a similar nature occurred in Spain. It was in the 
 fifteenth century that Spain was consolidated into one kingdom, and 
 the Spanish monarchy extended and confirmed by the conquest of 
 Granada, and the union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon. In 
 Germany the crown was conferred upon the powerful house of Austria 
 in the year 1438 ; and at the close of the century the emperor Maxi- 
 milian had united the Low Countries, and the county of Burgundy, 
 his wife's inheritance, to his paternal States of Austria ; so that over 
 the whole of Germany he exercised the imperial authority, which had 
 escaped from his predecessors. Although monarchy did not establish 
 itself in Italy, yet the centralization of powers progressed there also ; 
 and during the fifteenth century the numerous petty Italian Repub- 
 lics were concentrated in the hands of a few ruling families, most 
 of the Lombard free towns becoming merged in the duchy of Milan, 
 and Florence falling under the dominion of the Medici. Soon after 
 these events, the French, Spaniards, and Germans, overwhelmed 
 Italy ; in their struggle for the spoils of that ill-fated country they 
 deprived the Italians of the little remnant of their independence; 
 and henceforward the misfortunes of Italy are only episodes in the 
 history of other nations. 
 
 31. The most important events in the history of England during 
 the fifteenth century are the war with France, and the civil contest 
 between the houses of York and Lancaster. The protracted foreign 
 war contributed greatly to augment the powers of royalty, by keep-
 
 CHAP. XI] THE MIDDLE AGES. 783 
 
 ing the military force of the nation so long under the control of the 
 king ; while the civil wars of the two Roses, by diminishing the 
 numbers of the nobility of the kingdom, who were decimated by bat- 
 tles and wasted by proscription, and by ruining in fortune a large 
 portion of the survivors, so effectually crippled the feudal aristocracy 
 as to render it unable longer to resist the encroachments of royal 
 authority. With the accession of Henry VII., the first prince of 
 the house of Tudor, begins the era of political centralization in Eng- 
 land, and the triumph of royalty. 
 
 32. With the close of the fifteenth, century the ancient liberties of 
 Europe seem to have become nearly extinguished, while everything 
 tended to the establishment of absolute monarchy. " Parliaments 
 and diets, States-general, and cortes," says an English writer, " were 
 gradually disappearing from view, or reduced from august assemblies 
 to insignificant formalities ; and Europe seemed on the eve of exhib- 
 iting nothing to the disgusted eye but the dead uniformity of imbecile 
 despotism, dissolute courts, and cruelly-oppressed nations." a Yet 
 this revolution was not without its benefits. The feudal system and 
 the municipal system, theocracy, aristocracy, and democracy, separate 
 and combined, had failed in the organization of a government truly 
 national ; and monarchy alone seemed capable of bringing order out 
 of confusion, and guaranteeing to society that security which the 
 dawn of a brighter era in civilization demanded. Monarchy there- 
 fore came in at the proper time, to contribute to the cause of civil- 
 ization ; for it aided the progress of equality, by combating feudalism 
 and aristocratical privileges, and by introducing some degree of unity 
 in legislation, and in the administration of government. 
 
 VI. 
 
 33. Passing from the political to the moral and intellectual world, 
 we observe in the latter, during the fifteenth century, the MO RAL AND 
 beginning of changes and revolutions no less important ISTELLECT- 
 
 ,, .1 AT J j.1 -x * f T. UAL CHANGES 
 
 than in the tormer. Already the spirit 01 reform began IN TUE i5 TH 
 to agitate the church itself; and about the middle of the CENTURY.' 
 fourteenth century John Wickliffe, an English divine, who has been 
 called the morning star of the Reformation, boldly attacked papal 
 usurpation and the abuses of the Church ; and although the pope 
 insisted on his being brought to trial as a heretic, he was effectually 
 protected by the English nobility. In the year 1378, six years be- 
 
 a. Mackintosh. Hist Eng., i. 313.
 
 784 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 fore the death of Wickliffe, occurred what is called the great schism 
 of the West ; when two popes were created, Urban VI., and Clement 
 VII., one at Rome and the other at Avignon. The rival popes 
 hurled anathemas against each other, and excommunicated the parti- 
 sans of their adversaries as heretics ; the whole Christian world was 
 divided by the schism ; and although rival councils in the Church in 
 vain attempted reforms, and temporal powers succeeded little better 
 in their efforts, yet more liberal views, and a general desire of ref- 
 ormation, began to pervade all classes of society. In the early part 
 of the fifteenth century. John Uuss and Jerome of Prague, who had 
 joined in spreading the doctrines of Wickliffe, were condemned to 
 the flames as heretics and revolutionists. The Bohemian disciples of 
 Huss revenged his death by a revolt from, and a long and bloody 
 war with, the emperor Sigismund ; and although the revolt was sub- 
 dued, the spirit of reform could not be extinguished, but only waited 
 for an opportunity to break out anew, which it found at the begin- 
 ning of the next century. 
 
 34. The age that witnessed the first efforts of the human mind 
 to escape from the thraldom of religious despotism, witnessed also 
 
 the revival of literature, and many important inventions 
 REVIVAL OF j modern science. Genius, despising the vain cavils of 
 
 LITERATURE. ' . 
 
 the schools, began to study truth in the volume of na- 
 ture ; while Grecian and Roman learning were revived, and with 
 them an admiration excited for the institutions, opinions, philosophy, 
 and literature of antiquity. In the latter part of the thirteenth 
 century Roger Bacon, an Englishman, and Franciscan friar, became 
 famous for his discoveries in chemistry and mechanical philosophy. 
 In Italy, during the fifteenth century, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccacio, 
 distinguished themselves for the greatness and originality of their 
 conceptions ; and devoting themselves with enthusiasm to the study 
 of ancient models, gave to the Italian language, by the grace and 
 elegance of their compositions, much of that refinement of which it 
 now boasts. 
 
 35. Among the many important inventions that mark the devel- 
 
 opment of mind in the closing period of the Middle Ages, 
 
 INVENTIONS. j i i , j j ,1 1 ,i ,. 
 
 and which tended greatly to accelerate the progress of 
 modern civilization, may be mentioned the mariner's needle, which 
 changed the art of navigation, gave to commerce a wonderful ex- 
 tension, and opened the way to the discovery of a New World ; 
 paper made of linen, a cheap substitute for the scarce and expensive
 
 CHAP. IX.] THE MIDDLE AGES. 785 
 
 material of parchment ; painting in oil colors, which effected a 
 change in the system and the principles of the art, and rendered the 
 works of modern painters far more durable than those of the ancients; 
 engraving on copper, which multiplied and diffused the master- 
 pieces of art ; the manufacture of gunpowder, which, equalizing 
 the peasant and the noble on the field of battle, changed the whole 
 system of war ; and lastly the art of printing, the greatest of all 
 inventions, and the one which commemorates all others transmit- 
 ting to posterity every important event immortalizing the actions 
 of the great and, above all, extending and diffusing the Word of 
 God to all mankind. 
 
 36. Among the discoveries of this period was the opening of a new 
 route to India by Vasco do Gama, around the Cape of 
 
 n J TT J XT. i f 11 xl J- DISCOVERIES. 
 
 (rood Hope, and, the most important of all, the dis- 
 covery of America by Christopher Columbus, an event which burst 
 upon astonished Europe like a new creation, and one that has opened 
 for society a new field of development, where civilization may progress 
 unimpeded by the many incumbrances of opposing elements, and 
 systems, and castes, and classes, which, in the Old World, the wreck 
 of ages has strewn in its way. 
 
 50
 
 786 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAST III 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 
 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. The era of the Reformation. Germany, France, and England, at this 
 period. The four aspects under which the Reformation m;iy be viewed. 
 
 I. The causes that led to tlie Reformation. 
 
 2. The events that opened the Reformation. The causes to which it has been variously and 
 erroneously attributed. These not adequate to the effects attributed to them. The claim to 
 spiritual domination over the human mind. The progress towards menta! freedom, the true 
 cause of the Reformation. 3. The reformers themselves had but little idea of the prevailing 
 spirit of the age. The right of private judgment. 4. The subordinate causes which produced 
 the crisis. Effects of the great schism of the .West. The councils of Constance and Basil. 
 Dissolute lives of the popes. 5. Repugnant doctrines of the Romish Church. The influence 
 of considerations not strictly religious. Immoralities of the clergy, &c. 6. Protection extend- 
 ed to ecclesiastics guilty of crimes. Indulgences or pardons. 7. Riches and power of the 
 clergy. General dissatisfaction with the Church, and general tendency to freedom. 
 
 II. Progress and extent of the Reformation. 
 
 8. Establishment of the Reformation in the German empire. Its introduction Into France. 
 Opposition of the king, Francis I., to the new doctrines. John Calvin. Treatment of the 
 Huguenots. Edict of Nantes. Its revocation by Louis XIV. 9. Adoption of the principles 
 of the Reformation in England. The way previously prepared for them. 10. The immediate 
 causes of their ascendency in England. 11. The design, the creed, and the intolerance of Henry 
 the Eighth. The results of the position assumed by Henry. 12. Partial introduction of the 
 Reformation into Ireland. The struggles through which it passed in Scotland. 13. Its princi- 
 ples early introduced into the Northern kingdoms. Christian H., and Frederic I. of Denmark. 
 Gustavus Vasa of Sweden. 15. Suppression of the Reformation in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. 
 
 III. Character of the Reformation. 
 
 16. Intolerant spirit of the age. Both Protestants and Romanists involved in the charge. 
 The merit due to Luther and his coadjutors. 17. The right to propagate and defend opinions 
 by force generally claimed by all parties. 18. Both Romanists and Protestants demanded the 
 support of the civil power. Intolerance of Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Knox, &c. Extract from 
 Hallam : Persecution, the sin of the Reformed churches. 19. Luther more favorably distin- 
 guished than the other reformers. Account of Calvin's intolerance. How viewed by the 
 Romanists. 20. Intolerance of the English reformers. Henry the Eighth. His reign, 
 how characterized. Protestant cruelties in the reign of Edward VI. Roman Catholic 
 cruelties during the reign of Queen Mary 21. The acts of "supremacy" and "uniformity'' 
 passed during Elizabeth's reign. 22. Roman Catholic martyrs in the rei^n of Elizabeth. Re- 
 mark of Hallam. The pretence for the punishment of the Romanists. 23. The differences that 
 sprung up among the reformers themselves. Exterior ceremonies. The course pursued 
 by Cranmer and Ridley. The influence of the reign of Edward VI. Of Elizabeth. 24. At- 
 tempt to enforce uniformity to the rites of the established Church, in 1565. The controversy 
 with the English dissenters. Extract from Hallam. The two great branches into which the 
 Reformation was divided.
 
 CHAP. X.] THE REFORMATION. 787 
 
 IV. Effects of the Reformation. 
 
 25. Division of Europe into two classes of Slates. The Protestant States : Roman Catholic 
 States. Effects of the Reformation upon the papal power. 2(i. The Church of Rome improved 
 in science and morals. The characier of religion, so called, changed. 27. Effects upon the 
 progress of civilization ; emancipation of mind. Extension of religion. Independence of 
 the temporal power. Roman Catholic writers. 28. Progress of literature and the arts. Char- 
 acter of the literature of the sixteenth century. 29. Philosophy, the natural sciences, and 
 politics. The art of printing good and evil effects. 30. The great men of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury. English writers French Spanish German Italian. 
 
 1. The Reformation was the great event that distinguished the 
 sixteenth century. It originated at an era of great political im- 
 portance in the history of Europe in the midst of the great struggle 
 between Francis I. and Charles V., and at the moment when Eng- 
 land, under Henry VIII., placed in a position to hold the balance of 
 power between the rivals, began her first systematic interference in 
 continental politics. The Reformation may be viewed under four 
 different aspects : 1st. The causes that led to it : 2d. Its progress 
 and extent : 3d. Its character ; and 4th. Its effects. 
 
 I. 
 
 The causes that led to the Reformation. 
 
 2. The events that opened the Reformation, lying on the surface 
 of history, are familiar to most readers ; but its causes have not un- 
 frequently been confounded with the circumstances of its immediate 
 origin. It has been variously and erroneously attributed, on the 
 one hand, to the sale of indulgences, to the ambition of princes, 
 who desired to escape from the sway of papal tyranny, to the 
 avarice of the nobility, who sought to get possession of the property 
 of the clergy ; and, on the other, to the pure desire of effectually re- 
 forming the existing abuses of the Church. None of these causes, 
 however, are adequate to the effects attributed to them ; and for the 
 moving principle that urged forward so large a portion of the popu- 
 lation of Europe to rebel against the authority which it had so long 
 revered, we are compelled to look beyond accidental circumstances, 
 and beyond individuals themselves, who were merely the instru- 
 ments of a change that would ere long have been effected under the 
 names of some other reformers, if such men as Luther, and Zuinglius, 
 and Calvin, had never lived. If the spiritual power had yielded 
 everything demanded by the early reformers, both in temporal mat- 
 ters in exactions and tributes and in points of faith, but had still
 
 788 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY [PART III. 
 
 retained its claim to spiritual domination over the human mind, there 
 is no reason to believe that the religious revolution would have 
 stopped short in its course. After having obtained reform, it would 
 have demanded liberty. The true causes of the Reformation are to 
 be sought for in that undercurrent of social progress in which the 
 human mind had long been laboring to accomplish its freedom. We 
 have alluded, in a former chapter, to the failure of the attempts at a 
 theocratic organization of society, to the popular reaction against 
 the principles and dominion of ecclesiastical authority that began in 
 Europe as early as the middle of the thirteenth century, and to the 
 spirit of reform that began to agitate the Church itself a century 
 later, all indicating a tendency to an increasing exercise of private 
 judgment, and a gradual progress towards the emancipation of human 
 reason. The Reformation was the outward development of revolu- 
 tionary causes that had long been operating to free the human mind 
 from the bondage of spiritual despotism. 
 
 3. Yet the early reformers even Luther himself had but little 
 idea of the prevailing spirit of the age ; and the principles on which 
 the Reformation progressed were developed and perfected as circum- 
 stances called them forth. The right of private judgment in religious 
 matters was not contended for as an absolute principle, until long 
 after it had been generally exercised in point of fact ; and even 
 Luther, while appealing " from the pope ill informed to the pope 
 better informed," repeatedly offered to submit himself to the decision 
 of the Roman Church, when expressed under the authority of a gen- 
 eral .council. At a later period, however, the followers of Luther, 
 and probably Luther himself, would have regarded the decision of a 
 council of prelates as of no more binding authority in matters of 
 faith and doctrine than a mere dictum of the pope himself. 
 
 4. The more immediate causes which produced the crisis of the 
 Reformation, and that were subordinate to the general cause which 
 we have stated, were of a character affecting the entire administra- 
 tion of the government of the Roman Church, its doctrines, and the 
 manners and morals of its priesthood. The great schism of the 
 West, to which we have previously alluded, which divided the gov- 
 ernment of the Church among two or three contending pontiffs, each 
 excommunicating his rivals, and anathematizing those who adhered 
 to them, had an astonishing effect in diminishing the veneration with 
 which the world had been accustomed to view tho papal dignity, and 
 imposed upon community the necessity of the exercise of private
 
 CHAP. X] THE REFORMATION. 789 
 
 judgment, so far at least as to choose, among these infallible guides, 
 the one whose authority should be acknowledged. The councils as- 
 sembled at Constance and Basil, by taking into their hands the 
 authority of deposing and electing popes, spread the growing disre- 
 spect for the Roman See still wider, and taught the world that there 
 was a power within the Church superior to the Church itself; while 
 the dissolute lives of some of the popes of this period, and the fraud, 
 injustice, and cruelty of others in their administration, prepared the 
 minds of men to listen to the bold attacks of Luther and his follow- 
 ers against the high claims of papal prerogative. 
 
 5. Of the doctrines of the Roman Church, which the reformers 
 declared to be repugnant to the spirit of Christianity, and destitute 
 of any foundation in reason, in the word of God, or in the practice 
 of the primitive Church, we have given elsewhere a brief synopsis, a 
 and we leave their discussion to ecclesiastical historians, to whose 
 province they peculiarly belong. Considerations strictly religious, 
 however, although having their full weight with the learned, were 
 not more powerful in urging forward the Reformation than the gross 
 immoralities and excesses which stained the character of a great 
 portion of the Catholic clergy, from the pope downwards. When 
 Luther declaimed against the voluptuous lives of the ecclesiastics, 
 all his hearers were able, from their own observation, to confirm the 
 truth of his invectives ; while only a few could, of themselves, form 
 a satisfactory judgment of the points of religious faith which he 
 assailed. 
 
 6. The scandal of the crimes committed by many of the ecclesias- 
 tics, was increased by the facility with which such as committed them 
 obtained pardon. Under the growing influence of the court of Rome, 
 convents, monasteries, and all consecrated places of worship, had be- 
 come general asylums, or places of refuge, to which criminals might 
 escape, and be safe from the vengeance of the law. By another 
 stretch of papal prerogative, all clergymen, and others set apart to 
 perform religious services, were exempted from criminal process in 
 the courts of law, and delivered over to the ecclesiastical judge; 
 so that the Church alone took cognizance of the offence. As the 
 avarice and corruption of the court of Rome went hand in hand, the 
 next step in iniquity was for the officers of the Roman chancery to 
 decree the precise sum to be exacted for the pardon of every par- 
 ticular sin. A book was actually published by authority, containing 
 
 a. Pp. 331-2.
 
 790 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PARI IIL 
 
 all the specifications. A deacon guilty of murder could be absolved 
 for twenty crowns. A bishop or abbot might assassinate for three 
 hundred livres. Any ecclesiastic might violate his vows of chastity, 
 even under the most aggravating circumstances, for the third part 
 of that sum. The doctrine of granting indulgences for crime, opened 
 the way for a traffic still more profitable to the Holy See. Not only 
 were indulgences, or pardons, granted for past offences, but if a man 
 meditated any crime, he might, beforehand, purchase pardon, or ex- 
 emption from fclie penalty. The gross immoralities and the wicked- 
 ness which such a system introduced into society may be more easily 
 conceived than described. 
 
 7. Next to the degeneracy of manners among the clergy, their ex- 
 orbitant riches and power, when taken in connection with the manner 
 in which the former were acquired, and the latter exercised, rendered 
 them odious to the people, and objects of great jealousy to temporal 
 sovereigns. During the long contests between the popes and the 
 German emperors, concerning the right of investiture, or the appoint- 
 ment and endowment of bishops, the ecclesiastics seized a large por- 
 tion of the Imperial domains and revenues, which the emperors were 
 afterwards unable to wrest out of their hands, so great was the power 
 of the Church ; and at the period of the Reformation it was com- 
 puted that the German clergy had obtained possession, in various 
 ways, of more than one-half of the national property. In England, 
 the proportion was about one-fifth ; and throughout Christian Europe, 
 the share belonging to the Church was everywhere prodigious. The 
 avarice and extortion of the court of Rome were excessive almost to 
 a proverb. As Church property was exempt from taxation, the laity 
 were loaded with excessive impositions, while those who possessed 
 the greatest property were freed from any obligation to support 
 or defend the State. To so great a height had dissatisfaction risen 
 concerning the dissolute manners, the exorbitant wealth, and the 
 enormous power and privileges of the clergy, before the Reformation, 
 and such was the general tendency of the period to freedom and in- 
 dependence of thought, that the bold doctrines of Luther were pro- 
 mulgated with almost the certainty of success. Other men had long 
 before denounced the immoralities of the Romish clergy, had com- 
 bated many of the peculiar tenets of the Church, and had declaimed 
 against the tyranny of papal jurisdiction ; but the times were not 
 ripe for the success of their efforts. But when Luther and his coad- 
 jutors appeared on the stage, the minds of men had already been pre-
 
 CHAP. X-l THE REFORMATION. 791 
 
 pared, by a singular combination of circumstances, for receiving 
 their doctrines ; and, through infinite wisdom, instrumentalities ap- 
 parently the most inadequate, triumphed over a system of spiritual 
 despotism the most deeply rooted, and the most powerful that the 
 world has ever known. 
 
 II. 
 
 Progress and extent of the Reformation. 
 
 8. The final establishment of the Reformation in the German em- 
 pire dates with the treaty of Augsburg in 1555 ; but even before thia 
 period its principles had been propagated, more or less, throughout 
 nearly all the kingdoms of Europe. The Reformation was early in- 
 troduced into France, where it was countenanced by Margaret, queen 
 of Navarre, sister to Francis I. As early as 1523 there were in 
 several provinces of France large numbers of those who had con- 
 ceived the greatest aversion to the doctrines and tyranny of the 
 Church of Rome ; and among them were many nobles of the first 
 rank and dignity ; but, after troubles and commotions had been ex- 
 cited in several places on account of religious differences, the king 
 interposed his authority against the new sect, and caused many per- 
 sons eminent for their virtue and piety to be put to death in the 
 most barbarous manner. Although at times Francis showed a lean- 
 ing towards the Protestants, probably with a view to please his sister, 
 whom he tenderly loved, yet such was his abhorrence of the new 
 doctrines that he is said to have declared, that if he thought the 
 blood of his arm was tainted by the Lutheran heresy, he would 
 'lave it cut off; and that he would not spare even his own children, 
 f they entertained sentiments contrary to those of the Romish 
 Ohurch. The celebrated John Calvin, often called the second re- 
 former of the sixteenth century, the founder of the Presbyterian 
 form of Church government, was a Frenchman by birth, but, being 
 compelled to leave France, he settled first at Basil in Switzerland, 
 and afterwards at Genoa, at which latter place he possessed almost 
 absolute power in religious matters. The treatment of the French 
 Protestants, or Huguenots, as they were called by their adversaries, 
 was exceedingly cruel ; and in no other part of the world did the re- 
 formers suffer so much. In the year 1598, however, the famous 
 Edict of Nantes seemed to place the Reformation in France on a 
 firm basis ; but this act, after continuing in force nearly a century
 
 792 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 was revoked by Louis XIV., which led to a renewal of the persecu- 
 tions and bloody scenes that had disgraced the kingdom during the 
 reign of Charles IX. The profession of the reformed religion was 
 at no time so safe in France as in most other countries of Europe. 
 
 9. The principles of the Reformation began to be extensively 
 adopted in England as soon as an account of Luther's preaching was 
 received there. The way for them had probably been better pre- 
 pared in England than in any other country of Europe ; for almost 
 a hundred and fifty years before the time of Luther, Wickliffe had 
 maintained nearly the same doctrines as those taught by the great 
 reformer ; and his disciples, who were called Lollards, still existed 
 in the time of Henry the VIII., as a numerous, although a proscribed 
 sect, and among them the sentiments of Luther at once gained great 
 credit. 
 
 10. The immediate cause that gave the principles of the Reforma- 
 tion an ascendency in England was, undoubtedly, the king's passion 
 for and marriage with Anne Boleyn, and the divorce of his first wife 
 Catherine, in opposition to the counsels of the pope ; and such a 
 mingling was there of motives, temporal and spiritual, in this mat- 
 ter, that, as an able writer observes, " In England the interests of 
 Anne Boleyn and of the Reformation were considered the same."* 
 But although passion and policy were the leading motives that in- 
 fluenced the sovereign, the people were moved by principles that had 
 taken deeper root, and that honestly formed a part of their religious 
 faith. 
 
 11. It was not, apparently, the design of Henry the VIII. to re- 
 ject any of the doctrines, properly so called, or the most absurd su- 
 perstitions, of the Romish Church ; and the most essential article 
 in the creed of this monarch appears to have been his own supremacy, 
 as protector and supreme head of the Church of England ; and 
 whoever rejected this article of faith, whether Protestant or Papist, 
 was sure to suffer the most severe penalties. As an instance of the 
 impartiality of his intolerance, history relates that three persons 
 convicted of disputing his supremacy, and three deniers of the Roman 
 Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, were drawn on the same 
 hurdle to execution. It was probably owing to the peculiar position 
 assumed by Henry the VIII., as the head of a Church independent 
 of the Roman See, while he still, in other respects, avowed the princi- 
 ples of a Papist, that the Church of England differs less than any 
 
 a. Hallam's Const. Hist., ch. ii.
 
 CHAP. X.] THE REFORMATION. 793 
 
 other of the Reformed churches from the rites and principles of the 
 Roman hierarchy. 
 
 12. The Reformation was only partially introduced into Ireland, 
 although Henry the VIII. banished the monks from that country, 
 confiscated their revenues, and destroyed their convents. In Scot- 
 land the seeds of the Reformation were early sown by several pre- 
 lates and noblemen who had resided in Germany during the religious 
 disputes there ; but for many years the progress of the new doctrines 
 was checked by the most inhuman laws against heretics, great num- 
 bers of whom were burned at the stake. The most eminent of the 
 Scotch reformers was John Knox, a disciple of Calvin, who intro- 
 duced into Scotland the form of doctrine, worship, and discipline, 
 that had been established by Calvin at Geneva. About the time of 
 the accession of Elizabeth to the throne of England, civil war broke 
 out in Scotland, occasioned by an attempt of the queen regent, the 
 mother of Mary, to put down the Protestant reform ; but at last, 
 through the assistance of Elizabeth, the Protestant party triumphed, 
 and, after peace had been concluded, the Scottish parliament abol- 
 ished the Roman Catholic form of worship, and prohibited the cele- 
 bration of the mass, under severe penalties, (1560.) From this 
 period the Presbyterian form of doctrine has maintained the ascend- 
 ency in Scotland. 
 
 1 3. The principles of the Reformation were early introduced into 
 Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, by the young men of those countries, 
 who pursued their studies at Wittemberg and other German universi- 
 ties. Christian II. of Denmark, who ruled these Scandinavian king- 
 doms, although a heartless tyrant, received with joy the account of 
 this new religious system, by which princes were enabled at once to 
 correct the vices, and enrich themselves with the spoils of, the ancient 
 Church ; and the monarch used the utmost endeavors to induce 
 Luther to visit his dominions. 
 
 14. After the deposition and banishment of Christian II. in 1523, 
 his successor Frederic I., who had previously secretly embraced the 
 Protestant faith, conducted the religious affairs of his kingdom with 
 much greater prudence than his predecessor ; but during his entire 
 reign the Reformation was a continued struggle against the encroach- 
 ments of the aristocracy. In the year 1527, however, Frederic, after 
 much opposition, procured the publication of a famous edict, sanc- 
 tioned by a general diet of the kingdom, by which every subject of 
 Denmark was declared free to adhere to the tenets of the Church of
 
 794 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 Rome, or to the doctrines of Luther. The Reformation owes it 
 success in Sweden, in a great measure, to the wisdom, firmness, and 
 prudence, of Gustavus Vasa, raised by his countrymen to the throne 
 in place of Christian II. of Denmark, whose horrid cruelties lost 
 him the crown. No opposition could deter Gustavus from encourag- 
 ing and protecting the great work of the Reformation : he declared 
 publicly that he would lay down the sceptre and retire from the 
 kingdom, rather than rule a people enslaved by the orders and au- 
 thority of the pope; and in the year 1527 he obtained from an 
 assembly of the States the declaration that the Lutheran doctrines 
 shoulcj be the established religion of Sweden. From this time the 
 papal hierarchy in Sweden was entirely overthrown, and Gustavus 
 was declared head of the Church. 
 
 15. In Italy, immediately after the rupture between Luther and 
 the Roman pontiff, the doctrines of the Church lost ground, and 
 great numbers of people of all ranks expressed an aversion to the 
 papal yoke. In some places, and especially in the kingdom of 
 Naples, violent commotions ensued, and the terrors of the inquisition 
 alone were found adequate to put a stop to the progress of the 
 Lutheran heresies. In Spain and Portugal, the reform principles 
 encountered similar opposition, and were subjected to the same fate : 
 even before the breaking out of the Reformation in Germany, the 
 greatest cruelties were perpetrated in Spain, in the name of religion ; 
 during the forty- three years that ended in 1524, eighteen thousand 
 human beings were committed to the flames by the decisions of the 
 Spanish inquisition ; and papacy has ever since reigned triumphant 
 throughout the Spanish peninsula. 
 
 III. 
 
 Character of the Reformation. 
 
 16. At the time of the Reformation, very imperfect views pre- 
 vailed of the right of private judgment in religious matters ; and 
 even the early reformers themselves were far from being emancipated 
 from the intolerant principles of the age. Yet the opinion is very 
 prevalent among Protestants, that the Romanists alone inflicted the 
 penalty of death for doctrines which they deemed heretical. The 
 truth on this subject should not be concealed. A defence of the 
 glorious principles of the Reformation does not require any palliation 
 of the indefensible acts of its first authors j and while we mourn-
 
 CHAP. X.] THE REFORMATION. 795 
 
 fully regret that any warrant should have been given for the taunt 
 of the papists " that the reformers were only against burning when 
 they were in fear of it themselves," we are still bound to accord to 
 Luther and his coadjutors the merit of originating principles that 
 have since emancipated Christendom from the monstrous absurdity 
 of correcting and regulating religious faith by physical punishment. 
 
 17. During many centuries previous to the Reformation, Europe 
 had been accustomed to see opinions propagated or defended by force ; 
 so that, in the language of Robertson, " The charity and mutual for- 
 bearance which Christianity recommends with so much warmth, were 
 forgotten ; the rights of conscience and of private judgment were 
 unheard of; and not only the idea of toleration, but even the word 
 itself, in the sense now affixed to it, was unknown. A right to ex- 
 tirpate error by force was Universally allowed to be the prerogative 
 of such as possessed the knowledge of truth ; and as each party of 
 Christians believed that it had got possession of this invaluable at- 
 tainment, each claimed and exercised, as far as it was able, the rights 
 which this knowledge was supposed to convey. 
 
 18. " The Roman Catholics, as their system rested on the de- 
 cisions of an infallible judge, never doubted that truth was on their 
 side, and openly called on the civil power to repel the impious and 
 heretical innovators who had risen up against it. The Protestants, 
 no less confident that their doctrine was well founded, required, with 
 equal ardor, the princes of their party to check such as presumed to 
 impugn it. Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Knox, the founders of the 
 Reformed Church in their respective countries, so far as they had 
 power and opportunity, inflicted the same punishments, upon such as 
 called in question any article in their creeds, that were denounced 
 against their own disciples by the Church of Rome. To their fol- 
 lowers, and perhaps to their opponents, it would have appeared a 
 symptom of distrust in the goodness of their cause, or an acknowl- 
 edgment that it was not well founded, if they had not employed in 
 its defence all those means which it was supposed truth had a right 
 to employ. " a Such were the principles, and such the spirit of the 
 age, when the Reformation dawned upon benighted Europe. " Tol- 
 erance in religion," says Hallam, " was seldom considered as practi- 
 cable, much less as a matter of right, during the period of the Ref- 
 ormation. The difference in this respect between the Roman 
 Catholics and Protestants was only in degree ; and in degree there 
 
 a. Robertson's Charles V. p. 447.
 
 796 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAET III. 
 
 was much less difference than we are apt to believe. Persecution 
 is the deadly original sin of the Reformed churches; that which 
 cools every honest man's zeal for their cause, in proportion as his 
 reading becomes more extensive. " a 
 
 19. These are Protestant concessions, and they are highly credit 
 able to the fairness, candor, and liberality of their authors. The 
 remark of Robertson, however, requires some qualification, as Luther 
 should be favorably distinguished, on the subject of religious tol- 
 erance, from most of the other reformers. " There are passages in 
 his writings," says a late author, " with regard to the interference of 
 the magistrate in religious concerns, that do him honor ; but he was 
 favorably situated and lived not to see the temporal sword at his 
 command. He was never tried." 1 * Calvin, on the contrary, the 
 eminent Swiss reformer, cannot be so favorably noticed ; and his 
 conduct to Servetus, whom he caused to be brought to the stake, has 
 fixed an indelible stain upon his character. This Servetus had 
 carried his inquiries far beyond other reformers, not only renouncing 
 many of the opinions of the Roman Catholics, but going so far as 
 to question the doctrine of the Trinity. Passing through Geneva, he 
 was arrested at the instigation of Calvin, who prepared the articles 
 of accusation against him ; and when the magistrates condemned 
 him to the flames, even the mild Melancthon approved the act. The 
 intolerance which Calvin exhibited in this matter gave the papists an 
 opportunity to accuse the Protestants of inconsistency in their princi- 
 ples, which they did not fail to embrace. " How could Calvin, and 
 the magistrates of Geneva," said they, " who acknowledge no infalli- 
 ble interpretations of the scriptures, condemn Servetus to death be- 
 cause he explained them differently from Calvin, if every man has 
 the privilege to expound the scripture according to his own judgment, 
 without having recourse to the Church ? It is a great injustice to 
 condemn a man because he will not submit to the judgment of an en- 
 thusiast, who may be wrong as well as himself." 
 
 20. The early principles of the Reformation did not prevent the 
 English reformers from practicing, upon the Roman Catholics, se- 
 verities similar to those which the latter had inflicted upon the 
 Protestants while the power was in their hands. The intolerant 
 spirit of Henry VIII. was exercised towards both parties, as has 
 been stated ; but this was doubtless more from political than religious 
 intolerance ; and the reign of this monarch has been very justly char- 
 
 a. Hallam's Const. Hist. p. 63. b. Sinythe's Lectures on Mod. Hist. p. 292.
 
 CHAP. X.] THE REFORMATION. 797 
 
 acterized '' as a bridge which the nation was to pass on its road to 
 more complete reformation."* In the Protestant reign of Edward 
 VI. a commission was issued to archbishop Cranmer, " to inquire 
 into heretical pravity," being nearly the same words by which the 
 powor of the court of inquisition is described ; and although many 
 accused of entertaining anti-Protestant opinions, recanted them, one 
 Joan Boucher was burnt at the stake for maintaining some meta- 
 physical notions about the real nature of Christ ; and not long after, 
 one Von Paris, an eminent surgeon in London, was condemned to 
 death for Arianism. (1550-1.) While these two unfortunate and 
 most unjustifiable executions are to be exceedingly regretted, we find 
 that only a little later queen Mary, justly called the " Bloody Mary," 
 caused nearly three hundred Protestants to be burnt during less than 
 four years of her reign. (1555-8.) 
 
 21. In the early part of the reign of Elizabeth two important 
 statutes were enacted by parliament, in restraint of the Roman 
 Catholic doctrines and worship in England. The first, the act of 
 supremacy, obliged all ecclesiastics, and all persons holding office 
 under the crown, to abjure the spiritual as well as temporal juris- 
 diction of every foreign prince or prelate ; and the second, the act 
 of uniformity, prohibited, under severe penalties, any minister from 
 using any other liturgy or form of worship than that of the estab- 
 lished Church. Roman Catholic rites, however privately celebrated, 
 were thus absolutely interdicted ; and although the oath acknowl- 
 edging the queen's absolute supremacy was not fully enforced, yet 
 the Roman Catholics were otherwise severely persecuted during this 
 reign, and a systematic determination was evinced to extirpate their 
 religion. 
 
 22. It is believed that the Roman Catholic martyrs, under Eliza- 
 beth, amount to about two hundred, while many others died of hard- 
 ships in prison, and many were deprived of their property ; yet it 
 has been strenuously maintained by the apologists of Elizabeth, that 
 no one was executed by her, for his religion. " There seems," says 
 Hallam, " to be good reason for doubting whether any one who was 
 executed might not have saved his life by explicitly denying the 
 pope's power to depose the queen." 1 * The persecution of the Roman 
 ists was indeed carried on under the plea that the security of the 
 government demanded it ; and although this is doubtless a very un- 
 worthy pretence, yet it shows that the punishment of death for re- 
 st Mackintosh, ii. p. 202. b. Hallara'a Const. Hist, of Eng.
 
 798 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 ligious opinions was already deemed indefensible, under the increas- 
 ing liberality of the principles of the Reformation. 
 
 23. Any exposition of the character of the Reformation would be 
 very incomplete without an explanation of the differences that sprung 
 up among the reformers themselves. While Luther showed much 
 indifference about retrenching exterior ceremonies, and allowed the 
 use of crucifixes and images, tapers, and priestly vestments ; Calvin, 
 Zuinglius, and Knox, labored to eradicate them as remnants of 
 popish idolatry and superstition. Archbishops Cranmcr and Ridley, 
 who gave to the English Reformation its character, deeming them- 
 selves independent of any foreign master, adopted a course between 
 the Lutheran and Calvanistic ritual, but adhered the most closely to 
 the former. The influence of the reign of Edward VI. was favor- 
 able to the simpler forms ; but Elizabeth, who loved a more splendid 
 worship than had prevailed in her brother's reign, was not so averse 
 to all the tenets abjured by Protestants : she retained the crucifix, 
 images, and lighted tapers, in her own chapel, even after she had re- 
 luctantly made the concession to have them taken away from the 
 churches; and so opposed was she to the Protestant view of the 
 question relating to the marriage of the clergy, that she would never 
 consent to repeal the statute of her sister's reign against it. 
 
 24. The external religious observances continued in an unsettled 
 state in England until 1565, when the attempt was made to enforce 
 conformity to the rites of the established Church. Those of the 
 Puritan clergy so called because they aimed at what they deemed 
 a purer form of worship who would not conform to the use of the 
 clerical vestments, and other matters of discipline, were suspended 
 from their ministry, and their livings or salaries taken from them. 
 Up to the year 1570 the retention of superstitious ceremonies in the 
 Church was the sole avowed ground of complaint among the English 
 dissenters ; but when the Puritans were hunted from their private 
 conventicles, and persecuted with the most unsparing rigor, they be- 
 gan to consider the national religious system as itself in fault to 
 claim an ecclesiastical independence of the English Church and to 
 question the authority that oppressed them. A new feature in the 
 controversy now began to be developed ; the hour for concessions had 
 been suffered to pass ; political and religious principles began to be 
 intermingled ; and in the language of Hallam, " the battle was no 
 longer to be fought for a tippet and a surplice, but for the whole 
 ecclesiastical hierarchy, interwoven as it was with the temporal con-
 
 CHAP. X.] THE REFORMATION. 
 
 stitution of England. " a Our attention will hereafter be called to 
 the character and results of this controversy, as developed in the 
 English Revolution of the seventeenth century. Suffice it here to 
 remark, that we have followed the Reformation until we find it divid- 
 ed into two great branches, which were known as the Protestant 
 Episcopal, and the Puritanical : in subsequent history, the former, 
 which diverged least from the parent stem, will be found to continue 
 its course with a uniformity which has witnessed few changes or in- 
 terruptions ; the latter, more and more divergent, with the lapse of 
 time, has been divided and subdivided, almost without limits, until 
 a hundred homogeneous sects now make up the Puritanical party of 
 the Church. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Effects of the Reformation. 
 
 25. The first striking effect of the Reformation was the division 
 of Europe into two classes of States, Protestant and Roman Catholic. 
 The former were England, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Hol- 
 land, Switzerland, and one-half of Germany : the latter were Italy, 
 Austria, France, Spain, and Portugal. The defection of so many 
 opulent and powerful kingdoms from the Papal See was a fatal blow 
 to its grandeur and power, as it not only abridged the dominions of 
 the popes in extent, diminished their revenues, and left them 
 fewer rewards to bestow, but it also obliged them to adopt a different 
 system of conduct towards the nations which still continued to re- 
 cognize their jurisdiction, and to govern them by new maxims, and 
 with a milder spirit. 
 
 2G. But although the Reformation was fatal to the power of the 
 popes, it nevertheless contributed to improve the Church of Rome 
 both in science and morals ; as it created an emulation between the 
 rival Churches, that compelled the Catholic clergy to acquire the 
 knowledge requisite to defend their own tenets ; and moreover im- 
 posed the necessity of greater decency of conduct ; where every 
 irregularity was open to observation and censure, and was sure to be 
 contrasted with that austere purity of manners that marked the lives 
 of the Reformers. The Reformation, to a great extent, changed the 
 character of religion, so called, by making it more an object of the 
 understanding, and not of the eye ; of the heart, rather than of the 
 memory. 
 
 a. Hallam's Const. Hist. p. 114, Am. Ed.
 
 800 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 27. In its effects upon the progress of civilization, and in all its 
 relations with civil order, the Reformation produced results of im- 
 mense importance. By teaching man to think and reason for himself 
 in religious matters, and to acknowledge therein none but a divine 
 authority, it emancipated mind from the thraldom which ages of 
 spiritual despotism had imposed upon it ; it extended religion be- 
 yond ihe exclusive domain of the ecclesiastical order, and sent it 
 forth into the wide world of humanity, where, before, it had scarcely 
 been permitted to enter. This universality this general diffusion 
 of religious knowledge, had a farther important result, by taking 
 from a priestly caste and a corrupt hierachy the government of so- 
 ciety, and giving back to the temporal power that independence which 
 had been wrested from it. The Reformation purified religion and 
 morals, improved the intellect, and guaranteed civil liberty. Roman 
 Catholic writers, who impugn the faith and worship of the Protestant 
 reformers, seldom deny the otherwise beneficial effects of the Ref- 
 ormation. 
 
 28. The progress of literature and the arts during the sixteenth 
 century was greatly favored by the spirit of free inquiry fostered by 
 the Reformation, a spirit that extended beyond religion, and per- 
 vaded, more or less, every form and feature of society. The litera- 
 ture of this period begins to be distinguished by the first dawnings 
 of a bold and daring spirit of doubt, examination, and originality ; 
 a spirit that was partly arrested by a return to religious creeds in 
 the next century, but which we shall see reappearing near the close 
 of the eighteenth, and developing, with amazing energy and rapidity, 
 the wonderful inventions and discoveries which give to our 'own a 
 marked superiority over all former times. 
 
 29. Philosophy, which, during the Dark Ages, and down to the 
 close of the fifteenth century, was cultivated only by the learned, now 
 becomes more general, and extends its examination to every subject : 
 the dogmas of the schoolmen begin to be abandoned ; the natural 
 sciences leave chimerical systems, to enter upon the patli of observa- 
 tion and experiment ; and the theory of politics, discarding the rude 
 maxim of a barbarous age, that " might makes right," begins to take 
 for its avowed basis the principles of morality. The progress of the 
 art of printing, took knowledge from libraries, convents, and monas- 
 teries, where it was accessible to but few, and disseminated it among 
 the people. The intellectual excitement thus occasioned had also its 
 transient evil as well as its good effects ; knowledge, sought after at
 
 CHAP. X.] THE REFORMATION. 801 
 
 every hazard, and without method, was often necessarily superficial 
 and partial in its results ; and many learned men, stopping short in 
 their investigations, because all they desired to know was not unfold- 
 ed to them, became the most daring sceptics. 
 
 30. Among the great men of the sixteenth century, whose names 
 adorn the annals of literature and science, may be mentioned, as the 
 most prominent, Shakspeare in England, the glory of the British 
 drama together with Sidney, and Raleigh, and Drayton, and Spencer, 
 and Hooker, and Coke the latter, the celebrated author of the In- 
 stitutes, which are still the standard authority on English law. In 
 France we meet with the name of Montaigne, the witty, but subtle 
 and sceptical essayist ; and of Scaliger, the philologist, whom his 
 friends denominated " an ocean of science," and " the masterpiece of 
 nature." The most noted of the Spanish writers of this period are 
 Herrera, the historian, and Cervantes, author of the romance Don 
 Quixotte. The German States produced many writers of celebrity 
 in this period. Among theologians are the familiar names of Eras- 
 mus, Luther, Zuingle, and Melancthon ; while Copernicus, Tycho 
 Brahe, and Kepler, have acquired an immortality of renown by 
 their astronomical researches and discoveries. The sixteenth cen- 
 tury has been called the golden age of Italian intellect ; and the era 
 that gave birth to Ariosto and Tasso, to Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, 
 Correggio, Titian, and Palladio, has nobly merited the title. Ariosto 
 and Tasso are distinguished for those chivalrous poems, the " Or- 
 lando Furioso," and the " Jerusalem Delivered :" the cotemporary 
 artists, Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, Correggio,' and Titian, form the 
 most splendid group that the world has ever seen in the art of paint- 
 ing ; while the most widely known of all modern names in architec- 
 ture is that of Palladio. 
 
 51
 
 802 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAKT III. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 
 
 ANALYSIS. ]. Failure of attempts to organize a government truly national. State of 
 Kurope at the close of the fifteenth century. The sixteenth century the Reformation and ab- 
 solute monarchy. The contest that naturally followed the Reformation. The English Revolu- 
 tion. 2. The two causes why the political revolution broke out in England sooner than on the 
 continent. 
 
 3. How the Reformation in England had been accomplished. No changes in faith allowed 
 by Henry VIII. The English Church, as established in the reign of Edward VI. The compro- 
 mise effected by Cranmer. 4. How the Church of England was regarded by Luther and Calvin. 
 Its doctrines imposed by the king's supremacy alone. Declarations of the Puritans. The com- 
 promise effected by Cranmer regarded as only a partial reform. 5. The demand for farther 
 reformation. Why political liberty was invoked. Persecution and its effects. The Revolution 
 grew out of the partial suppression of the Reformation. 
 
 6. The second cause that hurried on a political revolution in England. The free institutions 
 of England. Magna Charta. 7. The English House of Commons : under the Plantaganets 
 under the Tudor princes. 8. Other liberal institutions, their tendencies, &c. The result, 
 
 9. The career of monarchy on the continent unchecked there, but resisted in England. 10. 
 Arbitrary principles of the Stuarts. James the First, and his courtiers and counsellors. The 
 views of the English people. 11. The demand for farther religious and political reforms at th 
 time of the accession of Charles I. Arbitrary principles of Charles. The legal reform party in 
 the House of Commons. Its character and objects. 12. The course pursued by this party the 
 granting of supplies. The contests of Charles with his parliaments. Eleven years of arbitrary 
 rule. A second reform party springs up. 13. Union and progress of the reformers during the 
 first session of the Long Parliament. 14. Schism in the constitutional party. Tories and 
 Whigs. Views, arguments, and principles, of the two parties. 15. Two religious sects con- 
 nected with the two political parties. Episcopacy supports the crown. Objects of the Pres- 
 byterians. 10. Pacific hopes blasted by the rashness of the king. Civil war. 17. New and 
 alarming doctrines. Appearance of a revolutionary or Independent party. Its political creed. 
 Its religious creed. Its success, under Cromwell, and overthrow of the monarchy. 18. Over- 
 throw of the Commons failure of all parties Cromwell at the head of the State. Character 
 of Cromwell's administration. 
 
 19. Restoration of monarchy, without pledges. 20. The government returns to its old posi- 
 tion, the ancient principles of the monarchy restored. 21. The reform party renews the 
 contest. 22. General profligacy of manners and morals. The Cabal Administration. 23. 
 Growing unpopularity of the king. Formation of a national party. 24. The national minis- 
 Iry its downfall. 25. Failure of all parties to afford a satisfactory government. Absolutism 
 of the king. Character of his government. Royalty did not abate any of its pretensions. Arbi- 
 trary character of the reign of James II. Coalition of parties, and deposition of-the reigning 
 sovereign. 
 
 26. Concluding event of the Revolution the crown settled on William and Mary. Change 
 in the principles of the government. 27. The effects of William's elevation : freedom of par- 
 liamentthe Commons, the paramount power in the State. Whig ascendency. Political sci- 
 ence. 28. Connection of the English Revolution with the general course of European civil- 
 ization. The course of monarchy on the other side of the Channel. Coalition against Louis 
 XIV. The great object of William of Orange. 29. The chief motive that prompted his ac- 
 ceptance of the English crown to strengthen the coalition against the absolute iponarchy of 
 Louis. The English Revolution not an isolated struggle for liCerty.
 
 CHAP. XL] ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 803 
 
 I. 
 
 1. In the brief sketch which has been given of the progress of 
 European civilization during the Middle Ages, it was shown that 
 the feudal system and the municipal system, theocracy, aristocracy, 
 and democracy, separate and combined, had failed in the organiza- 
 tion of a government truly national, whatever other good each of 
 these powers may have accomplished ; and that at the close of the 
 fifteenth century the ancient liberties of Europe seem to have be- 
 come nearly extinguished. The following century witnessed, in the 
 events of the Reformation, a great insurrection of the human mind 
 against absolute power in the spiritual order, while at the same time 
 the centralization of temporal power was progressing, and absolute 
 monarchy triumphed throughout Christendom. But freedom of 
 thought in religious matters, and the overthrow of the ancient eccle- 
 siastical tyranny, very naturally led to inquiries into the basis of 
 civil and political rights, and a desire for civil liberty ; and accord- 
 ingly a contest between liberal principles and absolutism naturally 
 followed wherever the Reformation had sown the seeds of freedom. 
 The first shock between these powers took place in England ; and 
 the struggle is known in history as the English Revolution, the 
 great event of the seventeenth century, and, next to the Reforma- 
 tion, with which it is intimately connected, the greatest event that 
 had hitherto happened in Europe. 
 
 2. Two prominent causes may be assigned why a general political 
 revolution broke out in England sooner than on the continent. The 
 first is the partial suppression of the Reformation, before it had 
 accomplished all its legitimate results, but not until the seeds of lib- 
 erty had been sown broadcast over the land ; the second is the exist- 
 ence of several important free institutions liberal maxims princi- 
 ples and precedents far in advance of any existing on the continent 
 at this period, and which gave a firm support to the reformatory 
 spirit of the age, and furnished it with the means of making its in- 
 fluence known. Let us examine these causes, and see how they oper- 
 ated in bringing. forward the great Revolution of the seventeenth 
 century. 
 
 II. 
 
 3. The religious reformation in England had not been accom- 
 plished in the same way as on the continent : in England it was the 
 work of the monarchs themselves, Henry the Eighth taking the 
 lead, in an attempt to constitute an English Church differing from
 
 804 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART lit 
 
 the Roman only on the point of supremacy, the king of England, 
 instead of the Pope, being declared its head. No changes in faith 
 were required or allowed ; and hence those who avowed the tenets 
 of Luther were burned as heretics, and those who owned the au 
 thority of the pope were hung as traitors. But Henry's system, 
 furiously assailed by the ardent reformers and the papists, died 
 with him ; and under the reign of his son Edward, the tenets and 
 homilies of the Anglican Church were established, essentially as 
 they now exist. (1549.) They were drawn up chiefly by archbishop 
 Cranmer, who was eminently qualified, in his double capacity of di- 
 vine and statesman, to act the mediator between the sweeping spirit 
 of reform, and that ecclesiastical organization which had admirably 
 served the purposes of the Church of Rome during so many cen- 
 turies. That the English Church still retains in its constitution, 
 doctrines, and services, visible marks of the compromise effected by 
 Cranmer, occupying a middle position between the Churches of 
 Rome and Geneva, will not be denied at this day ; nor is it surpris- 
 ing that it was denounced, at its origin, as retaining most of the 
 abuses of the papal hierarchy. 
 
 4. The admirers of Luther and Calvin, in particular disliked the rela- 
 tion in which the Church of England stood to the monarchy ; for as the 
 king arrogated to himself the right of deciding what was orthodox in 
 doctrine, and what was heresy, and claimed the supreme direction in 
 spiritual as well as in temporal matters, they regarded him as the pope 
 of his kingdom, and soon transferred to the new Church establishment 
 much of that animosity which they had evinced towards the Papal 
 See. The doctrines of the English Church, as set forth in the Articles 
 of Faith, compiled in the year 1549, were never confirmed by an as- 
 sembly of divines or by a convocation of parliament, but were im- 
 posed by the king's supremacy on all the clergy and the universities. 
 The Puritans declared that, on the point of supremacy, the king 
 went even farther than the pope ; for the latter was in a degree sub- 
 ject to the decisions of general councils of the Church ; whereas the 
 former dictated articles of faith, and prescribed modes of worship, on 
 his sole authority. The compromise arranged by Cranmer was re- 
 garded, by a large body of Protestants, as a scheme for serving two 
 masters : it had met with much opposition in the days of Edward 
 the Sixth, as being but a partial reform, and much less than the in- 
 terests of pure religion required ; and, in the reign of Elizabeth, the 
 difficulties which it encountered were greatly increased. Elizabeth
 
 CHAP. XL] ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 805 
 
 was not disposed to make any concessions to her Puritan subjects ; 
 and persecution was called in to enforce the observance of the estab- 
 lished doctrines and worship. 
 
 5. The people declared that the Reformation had been forcibly 
 arrested in its progress : their miuds were left agitated and uneasy, 
 craving still greater spiritual freedom than they had obtained, de- 
 siring a still farther reformation of abuses, and attributing their per- 
 petuation to unauthorized assumption of power by the temporal sov- 
 ereign. As the monarch necessarily required temporal aids to en- 
 force his supremacy as head of the Church, so the religious reform 
 party, aiming at the root of the evil, invoked political liberty to the 
 aid of its faith and worship, against the whole system of absolute 
 sovereignty which the Tudor princes had labored to establish. Per- 
 secution produced its natural effects : it converted the Puritan sects 
 into a political faction ; and the controversy of divines about religious 
 faith and worship soon became a political contest between the crown 
 and the people. It was thus that the partial suppression of the 
 Reformation in England, and the measures adopted for the establish- 
 ment of the English Church, formed one of the leading causes of the 
 great political revolution that soon followed. The religious reforma- 
 tion being checked by the hand of power, and the spirit of liberty 
 which it had aroused being smothered, England rested on a vol 
 cano, whose pent-up fires only slumbered, to break forth in the de- 
 vastating effects of a moral earthquake. 
 
 III. 
 
 6. The second great cause that hurried on a political revolution in 
 England, sooner than on the continent, was the support which the 
 new spirit of liberty found among the English people, in the exist- 
 ing free institutions of the country. The origin of the free institu- 
 tions of England, as is well known, dates baok to the year 1215, 
 when a coalition of the great barons wrested Magnet, Charta from 
 king John. The 'most important articles of this instrument, are 
 those which provide that no freeman shall be arrested, or imprisoned, 
 or proceeded against, " except by the lawful judgment of his peers, 
 or by the law of the land," and that no aid or taxes shall be im- 
 posed, unless by the concurrence of the common council of the king- 
 dom. So important was the Great Charter deemed to the security 
 of public and private rights, that the people obtained from their sov-
 
 S06 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 ereigns the confirmation of it upwards of thirty times between the 
 thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. 
 
 7. From the time of the Norman conquest, indeed, there had ex- 
 isted a " great council " of the kingdom, composed of the chief feudal 
 tenants of the crown ; but it was not until after the reign of John 
 that the House of Commons had been formed on the representative 
 system, and taken its place among the sovereign institutions of the 
 country. For a long time it exerted little influence in the govern- 
 ment, afraid rather of bringing itself into trouble and danger, than 
 desirous of augmenting its power and authority ; but under the 
 Plantaganets, (from Henry II. to Richard III. inclusive, 1154 
 1485,) when private rights were invaded it showed itself the champion 
 of the oppressed, and in its legal decisions and enactments gradually 
 put forward and established those principles which have become the 
 basis of the English constitution. Under the Tudors, on the con- 
 trary, (from Henry VII. to Elizabeth, inclusive, 1485 -1603,) so 
 great were the encroachments of the crown and its officers upon pri- 
 vate rights, and the difficulty of procuring adequate redress, that the 
 general privileges of -the nation were far more secure than those of 
 private citizens. The House of Commons no longer defended indi- 
 vidual liberties so successfully as under the Plantagenets, but it inter- 
 fered to a much greater extent than formerly in the general affairs 
 of the nation ; and this laid the foundation of the power which it has 
 
 "er since wielded in the administration of the government. 
 
 8. Other institutions pregnant with the seeds of liberty, and af- 
 fording support and encouragement to the new spirit of reform, were 
 found in the system of trial by jury, in the right of holding public 
 meetings and bearing arms, in the privileges of chartered towns 
 and the immunities of corporations, and in the precedents, favor- 
 able to liberty, found in the decisions of courts of justice and the 
 legal enactments of parliament ; although it is true that these 
 decisions and enactments sometimes furnished examples of an op- 
 posite nature ; still they were sufficient to countenance the claims 
 of the friends of liberty, and to support them in their struggles 
 against arbitrary and tyrannical government. Such were the two 
 prominent causes that placed the English people in a state of readi- 
 ness for a successful political revolution, whenever circumstances 
 should urge it on ; they were the platform whence liberty unfurled 
 her banners the fulcrum on which the lever of reform rested.
 
 CHAP. XL] ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 807 
 
 IV. 
 
 9. While this state of things existed in England, monarchy was 
 running the same career there that it had pursued on the continent 
 arrogating to itself all prerogatives, and allowing the liberties of the 
 people to exist only as subordinate rights, or rather as concessions 
 for which they were indebted to the sovereign's generosity. On the 
 continent, monarchy found nations incapable of resisting its pre- 
 tensions ; but in England the causes which we have mentioned had 
 secretly undermined its foundations, and prepared its ruin, while it 
 was still in the tide of apparently successful progress. 
 
 10. The princes of the Stuart family, still more than the Tudors, 
 were imbued with the principles of absolute monarchy. James the 
 First made no concealment of his sentiments ; he wished to be 
 thought a despot ; the " divine right of kings" was his favorite max- 
 im ; and his courtiers and counsellors, when forced to vindicate the 
 measures of his government, such as arbitrary imprisonments and 
 illegal taxes, alleged the examples of the monarchs of France and 
 Spain. " The king of England," said they, " cannot be of lower 
 degree than his equals ; and the dignity of the English prince re- 
 quires that he should enjoy the same rights." The English people, 
 on the other hand, had lived faster than their rulers : they 'had out- 
 grown such arbitrary principles, and were unable to reconcile the 
 arrogant assumptions of their rulers with the liberties of their country. 
 
 11. At the time of the accession of Charles the First the senti- 
 ments of the people had become sufficiently developed to make known 
 the general want of additional religious reform, and greater political 
 liberty, both of which seemed arrested by the absolute monarchy now 
 establishing its power. Charles had inherited his father's political 
 maxim of the " divine right of kings ;" the archbishop of Canterbury 
 was suspended from his office, and banished from London, because he 
 would not preach the doctrine of passive obedience ; and in all things 
 Charles sought opportunities of enforcing the principles of abso- 
 lutism upon the nation. In the House of Commons arbitrary mon- 
 archy encountered its first decided opposition ; and a party, consist- 
 ing of the religious and political reformers, was there organized, 
 having for its object the advocacy of legal, constitutional reforms, 
 on the basis of the liberties guaranteed in Magna Charta, and con- 
 firmed by the ancient laws, institutions, and usages of the realm. 
 This party, the first that appeared in the field, although strongly at- 
 tached to monarchy and episcopacy, yet wished to bring the former
 
 808 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAUT IIL 
 
 back within the limits of constitutional power, by putting a stop to 
 illegal imposts, to arbitrary imprisonments, and to all acts contrary 
 to law and usage ; while it also desired to restrain the encroachments 
 of the latter, believing that its jurisdiction was too extensive, and 
 that it possessed far too much political power. 
 
 12. The legal reform party, which had the control of parliament, 
 at once seized upon the only effective engine of opposition that it 
 possessed ; and, determined to place the king in a position where he 
 should rule in conformity with its wishes, or openly violate the most 
 sacred principles of the constitution, sought to hold the king sub- 
 servient to its wishes by voting supplies very sparingly, and, even 
 then, only as the price of reformation. When the king demanded a 
 subsidy, the House of Commons demanded a redress of grievances ; 
 but the haughty spirit of Charles could not brook such presumption : 
 his first parliament was quickly dissolved, and taxes were levied by 
 the royal authority alone. A second parliament proved as intract- 
 able as the first ; and in a third the opposition was stronger and 
 fiercer than ever. Charles now changed his tactics : he agreed to a 
 compromise of differences ; and by ratifying the famous Petition of 
 Bight, he bound himself to abandon forever illegal imprisonments 
 and arbitrary taxation. The commons now granted an ample supply ; 
 but in three weeks the royal promise by which that supply had been 
 obtained was broken. A violent contest followed ; the parliament 
 was angrily dissolved; and during eleven years, from March 1629 to 
 April 1640, Charles ruled without the aid or counsel of the repre- 
 sentatives of the nation. During this interval of arbiirary rule it 
 became more and more apparent that some new securities, some im- 
 portant limitations of royal authority, were absolutely indispensable 
 for the preservation of English liberties and privileges ; and by the 
 time of the convocation of the Long Parliament, in 1640, a second 
 party, more revolutionary than that which had hitherto opposed arbi- 
 trary abuses, had grown up, and now had the ascendency in the 
 House of Commons. 
 
 1 3. During the whole of the first session of the Long Parliament, 
 these two parties still remained united, eagerly engaged in the work 
 of promoting popular reforms, and in bringing the instruments of 
 tyranny to justice. It was enacted that the interval between the 
 assembling of two successive parliaments should not exceed three 
 years ; and the people welcomed the act with bonfires, and every 
 demonstration of joy. After laying this solid foundation for the
 
 CHAP. XL] ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 809 
 
 maintenance of the laws, the Commons abolished the court of the 
 Star Chambor, and of the High Commission, and annihilated the ar- 
 bitrary jurisdiction of several other irregular tribunals ; prisoners of 
 State were released from confinement ; Archbishop Laud, one of the 
 king's ministers, was imprisoned and Strafford was impeached, and 
 at length brought to execution, as the chief adviser of the tyranny 
 of the king, his master. 
 
 14. At the opening of the second session of the Long Parliament, 
 in November 1641, the final schism in the constitutional party became 
 apparent ; and from that day dates the corporate existence of the 
 two great parties which, under the appellation, first, of Cavaliers and 
 Roundheads, and subsequently, of Tories and Whigs, have ever since 
 alternately governed the English nation. The early constitutional 
 party, now the party of the court, still stood on its ancient ground, 
 but pleaded strongly for conservatism, alleging that the rights of the 
 nation had been vindicated, and surrounded with new securities by 
 the recent enactments of parliament ; that the edifice of the constitu- 
 tion which had received such violent shocks in the recent struggle 
 now needed the most watchful care for its preservation ; and that the 
 prerogatives with which the law had, for the public good, armed the 
 sovereign, should be guarded from further encroachments, lest the 
 victory over despotism should run into anarchy. Thus argued the 
 enlightened royalists. Their opponents contended that good laws 
 were not sufficient to stem the tide of despotism that the liberties 
 which the English people enjoyed were rather apparent than real 
 that unless more radical changes were made in the government, and 
 the king restrained from the personal exercise of any effective power, 
 the royal word was the only security for English freedom ; and it had 
 been proved, in the case of the Petition of Right, that the royal 
 word was not to be trusted. In fine, instead of acknowledging the 
 absolute sovereignty of the crown, this party contended for the sov- 
 ereignty of the House of Commons, the representatives of the nation, 
 while behind this lurked the scarcely yet avowed principle of the 
 sovereignty of the people. This has been called the political revolu- 
 tionary party, although it sought only a legal reform, and professed 
 adherence to the principles of a monarchy properly limited and 
 controlled. 
 
 15. With each of the contending parties, a religious sect was 
 closely allied the Episcopalians with the conservatives, and the 
 Presbyterians with their opponents. Episcopacy had gained every-
 
 810 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART HL 
 
 thing from the crown, and she gave it a cordial support in return. 
 The Presbyterians, on the other hand, wished to produce important 
 changes in the Church, similar to what their allies were endeavoring 
 to effect in the State to erect a system of Church government 
 emanating from the people, composed of a series of assemblies, but 
 without any gradation of orders in the priesthood, and without any 
 preferences but those which should be constituted by voluntary agree- 
 ment for the sake of order. 
 
 16. The first collision between the two parties in parliament was 
 highly favorable, in its results, to the conservatives ; and the modera- 
 tion which the king had now assumed promised well for his cause, 
 when a single false step, his attempt to seize the five members 
 within the walls of the House a placed all reconciliation at a hopeless 
 distance, and rendered his affairs irretrievable by anything short of 
 civil war.- That fatal act showed the little regard of the king for 
 the privileges of Parliament ; he had broken faith with even his 
 own adherents, many of whom now deserted him ; and in the House 
 of Commons the opposition became at once irresistible. Those who 
 still adhered to the monarch withdrew the king quitted London 
 civil war began, and two parties only were known, the party of the 
 king, and the party of Parliament. 
 
 17. Before the war had lasted two years the most alarming doc- 
 trines, both religious and political, began to arrest public attention. 
 A third party, exchanging the watchword of reform for that of revo- 
 lution, had grown up in the parliamentary ranks, In politics, this 
 party would have swept away the ancient institutions of England, 
 its judicial system and its administrative system, even monarchy 
 itself placing all on a new basis, changing not only the form, but 
 the foundation of the government and erecting a commonwealth or 
 republic on the ruins of the old English polity. In religion, the 
 men of this party called themselves Independents : they, maintained 
 the uncontrolled independence of every single congregation of Chris- 
 tians, and condemned every national establishment of religion, whether 
 Papal, Episcopal, or Presbyterian, as merely forms of one great 
 apostasy. Under the banners of this party marched all the radical 
 republicans of the day, and all the advocates of absolute liberty of 
 faith and worship. The soul of this party was Oliver Cromwell , 
 and, under the guidance of his master spirit, episcopacy was repudi- 
 ated, the act establishing presbytery as the national Church was 
 
 a. See p. 304.
 
 CHAP. XL] ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 811 
 
 rendered inoperative, in favor of the Independents ; and monarchy 
 was overthrown, by the execution of the king. England was declared 
 a commonwealth, and the republican party was left master of the 
 field, and of power. 
 
 18. That portion of the republican party which filled the House 
 of Commons, now reduced to fifty or sixty members, and forming 
 what was contemptuously called the Rump, soon found its govern- 
 ment of the country rejected, and anarchy, which it had not the 
 power to restrain, everywhere prevailing. Ejected from their seats 
 and the doors closed upon them, the Republican members resigned 
 their power without a struggle. Thus King, Lords, and Commons, 
 had in turn been vanquished and destroyed : the legal reform party, 
 the political revolutionary party, and the republican party, had suc- 
 cessively failed in conducting the revolution ; and Cromwell one 
 of the master spirits whom revolutionary times produce who had 
 done more than any other man to overthrow authority, was now the 
 only man who could restore it. The country required a ruler ; and 
 in the emergency Cromwell placed himself at the head of the State 
 Although no party liked to see the government in his hands, and all 
 repeatedly, and at the same time, attacked his power, yet to the last 
 he was honored by the army, obeyed by the whole British population 
 without having gained their affections, and dreaded by all foreign 
 powers. His administration was arbitrary, of necessity, but not cruel 
 and tyrannical ; property was secure, and justice was administered 
 with impartiality ; while the foreign policy of Cromwell raised high 
 the fame of the nation, and brought back the renown of the age of 
 Elizabeth. 
 
 V. 
 
 19- Upon Cromwell's death, the government again fell into the 
 hands of the republicans ; but they succeeded no better than before ; 
 and a coalition between the old conservative -party and those who 
 separated from it in 1641, restored constitutional monarchy. Cava 
 Hers and Roundheads, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, waving 
 petty scruples and postponing to a more convenient season their dis- 
 putes about reform, united to reestablish the old civil polity of the 
 kingdom, as the only chance of escaping from the terrors of military 
 despotism and civil anarchy. A prince of the Stuart family was 
 restored to the throne of his fathers, without any pledges for the se- 
 curity of those liberties which the nation had been striving, during 
 twenty years, to establish.
 
 812 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 20. At the restoration, the government returned to the position 
 in which it had been left when Charles the First, eighteen years be- 
 fore, withdrew from his capital. The acts of the Long Parliament 
 which had received the royal assent were evidently still binding upon 
 the crown and the nation ; but all subsequent proceedings of the gov- 
 ernment were regarded by the party of the court as the acts of a 
 usurping faction. The complexion of the first parliament called by 
 Charles the Second was decidedly Royalist ; and under the ministry 
 of Lord Chancellor Hyde, soon created Earl of Clarendon, a man 
 who venerated the royal prerogative, who was strongly attached to 
 Episcopacy, and who regarded the Roundheads with political and 
 personal aversion, the old ecclesiastical polity was revived, and the 
 ancient principles of the monarchy restored. Again the doctrine of 
 the absolute sovereignty of the king was placed. at the head of the 
 creed of the dominant party ; and although it was acknowledged that 
 the royal prerogatives were limited by the House of Commons, as re- 
 gards taxation, and by the judicial tribunals in matters affecting 
 private rights, yet they still gave to the crown an almost complete 
 independence in point of government, and a preponderating control 
 over Parliament. 
 
 21. But notwithstanding the strong reaction at first in favor of 
 royalty, the fundamental principles upon which the Clarendon min- 
 istry was based had now become old and powerless ; twenty years of 
 parliamentary rule had destroyed them forever : the coalition that 
 had restored royalty terminated with the danger from which it 
 sprung ; and the reform party, though trampled upon, and seemingly 
 annihilated, again raised its head, and renewed the inlerminable war. 
 
 22. Meanwhile a general profligacy of morals and manners had 
 grown up in the nation, and pervaded the court ; Clarendon, an, un- 
 flinching royalist, but a despiser of fashionable debauchery, became 
 unpopular with both parties, and his administration odious ; a new 
 party arose out of the discontented spirits who cared little about 
 legal order, and were only anxious for their own success ; and from 
 the profligates and libertines of the court, the Cabal administration 
 was formed, an administration regardless of law, or right, or justice ; 
 and that sought the means of success by every tortuous policy, with- 
 out regard to its own dignity, or the honor of the nation. 
 
 23. But corruption so glaring and so public ere long deprived the 
 king of the whole stock of popularity with which he had commenced 
 bis administration : the national pride was wounded by the reverses
 
 CHAP. XL] ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 813 
 
 sustained in foreign wars ; a deep anxiety for civil liberty pervaded 
 the nation, and alarming rumors of Popish plots, and of a design to 
 restore the Roman Catholic faith, were industriously circulated. The 
 Cabal ministry fell before the gathering storm ; a national party be- 
 came gradually formed in the House of Commons ; and in 1679 the 
 king was obliged to take the leaders of it into his council. 
 
 24. Although the national ministry consisted, in great part, of 
 those eminent men, of pure intentions, who had headed the oppo- 
 sition in both houses of parliament, yet the suspicions attached 
 to the king's character greatly abated the public esteem for those 
 who had gone into his council ; they could neither gain the confidence 
 of the nation, nor manage the interests, habits, or prejudices of the 
 king, who soon broke his faith with those by whom he had pledged 
 himself to be directed. The national ministry, after holding power 
 less than a year, was broken up, and the agitation became more violent 
 than ever. 
 
 25. Thus the English restoration, like the English Revolution, had 
 in a manner tried all parties ; and the Clarendon or legal ministry, 
 the Cabal or corrupt ministry, and the national ministry, had suc- 
 cessively failed to afford the nation a satisfactory government. As 
 at the close of the revolutionary troubles in 1653 Cromwell turned 
 the disordered elements of party strife to his own advancement, so 
 Charles II. now turned them to the profit of the crown, by enter- 
 ing upon a career of absolute power, although he seldom dared 
 to infringe upon the fundamental privileges of the nation. The 
 Anglican clergy of this period boldly asserted the doctrine of ab- 
 solute non-resistance ; servile writers endeavored to show that Mag- 
 na Charta, and other constitutional laws, were but rebellious en- 
 croachments upon the prerogatives of monarchy ; and among the 
 propositions which the University of Oxford denounced as damnable, 
 was the republican doctrine that all civil authority is derived orig- 
 inally from the people. Under Charles II. royalty had not abated 
 any of its pretensions ; and under his successor, James II., it rapidlj- 
 approached the despotic rule of the first Charles. But what hastened 
 the crisis of the Revolution was the desire of James to achieve a 
 triumph for popery as well as for absolute power ; and from the 
 prospect thus presented, the nation shrunk with horror. Thus, as 
 at the commencement of the Revolution, there was a religious struggle 
 and a political struggle, both directed against the government ; and, 
 as at the restoration, a coalition was formed between the two great
 
 814 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 parties of the nation, the reformers and the conservatives, since better 
 known as "Whigs and Tories, and the result was a deposition of the 
 reigning sovereign, and a change of dynasty by a transfer of the 
 crown to William, Prince of Orange. 
 
 VI. 
 
 26. The concluding event of the Revolution, the act by which the 
 crown was settled on William and Mary, terminated a contest which 
 had been waged ever since the reign of king John, between the crown 
 and the people ; and which, under the last of the Stuarts, had been 
 obstinately maintained by royalty against the liberties and the re- 
 ligion of England. By the Act of Settlement, and the Declaration 
 of Rights which soon followed it, all the arbitrary prerogatives of 
 ro} r alty were taken away ; and in place of the maxim of the " divine 
 right of kings," and the doctrine of passive obedience, it was hence- 
 forth conceded that the rights of the crown emanated from the par- 
 liament and the people. The immediate beneficial effects of the es- 
 tablishment of this just principle of government were not confined 
 to the British islands ; they extended across the ocean, and relieved 
 the British American colonies of much of that royal tyranny against 
 which they had so long been struggling. 
 
 27. The effects of William's elevation went far beyond a mere 
 change of dynasty. Placed on the throne by the nation itself, to the 
 rejection of the claims of hereditary right, his title was bound up 
 with that of the nation to its liberties. Chosen by the free-will of 
 parliament, the freedom of that body became part of the royal creed ; 
 its wishes the king was bound to conform to ; its support was ever 
 necessary to his own security ; and henceforth the House of Com- 
 mons, which now, for the first time, assumed the distribution of the 
 revenue the regulation of the expenses of the army, the navy, &c. 
 became the paramount power in the State. From the Revolution to 
 the death of George the Second, a period of seventy years, the Whig 
 party had the ascendency in the government ; and it was a funda- 
 mental doctrine of that party, (however often they might depart from 
 it in practice,) that power is a trust for the people, to be used for 
 their benefit. Political science made a great stride during this 
 period, producing its effects not only upon England, but upon France 
 also, and through France, upon Europe. 
 
 28. It is at the point when the republican government of Holland 
 was called to the defence of English liberties, that the English Revo-
 
 CHAP. XL] ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 815 
 
 lution links itself with the general course of European civilization. 
 It would be a contracted view of this great event to regard it as ex- 
 clusively English in its character, without showing the connection of 
 its results with the great drama that was enacting on the broader 
 stage of continental politics. While the struggle of absolute power 
 against civil and religious liberty took place in England, pure mon- 
 archy, in the person of Louis XIV., was waging a war against the lib- 
 ties and the independence of States on the other side of the Channel. 
 Against Louis a powerful coalition was entered into, in which the Pro- 
 testant Republic of Holland, with William of Orange at its head, took 
 the lead. To the one object of securing the liberties of his country, and 
 of Europe against the present aggressions of Louis, and his schemes 
 for universal monarchy, the whole of the heroic life of William was 
 devoted with undeviating firmness, and with an ardor and persever- 
 ance that has scarcely a parallel in history ; and it was an important 
 part of his magnanimous designs to place England in its natural 
 position, as a party to the coalition which he had formed. Under 
 Charles II. the English government had been treacherously sub- 
 servient to the counsels of Louis, who had found in James II. a still 
 more devoted adherent, and the liberties of England an enemy whose 
 resentment could never be appeased, and whose power, consequently, 
 must be taken away. 
 
 29. A deep feeling of enmity to France and her monarch, and the 
 cause which he represented, had taken possession of William's soul ; 
 and that feeling governed the whole of his policy towards England. 
 His public spirit was European in its character ; and when the crown 
 of England was tendered him, the chief motive that prompted his 
 acceptance was not personal ambition, nor the interests of the people 
 whose cause he served, nor the safety of his own country, but a de- 
 sire to lay hold of England as a new force requisite to complete the 
 coalition of feeble and dispirited States against their common enemy. 
 With this view of the subject, the course which William pursued 
 towards the contending parties in England appears far more uniform 
 and consistent than when supposed to be restricted in its objects to 
 the narrow theatre of English politics ; and the English Revolution, 
 instead of an isolated struggle for liberty, becomes, independently of 
 the influence of its example, an important act in the great drama of 
 European civilization.
 
 816 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAET IIL 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 ANALYSIS. 1. The French Revolution the great event of the eighteenth century. In 
 what light we are at first disposed to view it. 2. A great development of the inconstancy of 
 French character. An era in the page of history. 3. Previous inquiry into the state of civil- 
 ization at the close of the fifteenth century. Further examination of the state of French society. 
 
 4. GROWTH AND CHARACTER or THE FRENCH MONARCHY AND NOBILITY. Political aspect 
 of Gaul under its feudal lords. The chieftain Clovis. 5. Limited powers of the Merovingian 
 kings. 6. Overthrow of the Merovingian dynasty. 7. Character, extent, and full, of the Carlo- 
 vingian dynasty. Increased power of the nobility. Why the Carlovingian dominion failed. 
 8. Election of Hugh Capet by the feudal lords, aud gradual subversion of the power of the 
 latter. Enlargement of the royal domain. 
 
 9. ORIGIN OF THE THIHD ESTATE, OR COMMONS. The free towns, or municipalities, aid in 
 the overthrow of feudalism. Change in the character of society. The municipal republics 
 absorbed in the absolutism of Louis'XIV. Subsequent reappearance of this part of the social 
 system. 
 
 10. CHARACTER AND POSITION OF THE GALLICAN CHURCH. The Church early made de- 
 pendent upon the crown. Pontifical decrees not binding on any Frenchman without the consent 
 of the monarch. 11. Original jurisdiction of the French ecclesiastical courts gradually, but 
 permanently impaired. 12. Church property not taxed without the free consent of the eccle- 
 siastical order. Immense amount of Church property. Political influence of the Church. 
 
 13. PECULIARITIES OF EARLY FRENCH LEGISLATION. The parliaments of the feudal lords. 
 The king's parliament. Enlargement of its powers by Louis VII., and origin of the French 
 peerage. Enlargement by Louis IX. The French noblesse in the seventeenth century. Their 
 mutual jealousies they are hated by the plebeian classes their exclusive privileges. 14. 
 Origin aud composition of the States-General. Its rights and powers. Previous to Louis XVI., 
 France had no constitution, and the king was the real as well as nominal lawgiver. 
 
 15. RELATIONS BETWEEN THE RULING ORDERS AND THE PEOPLE DURING THE CENTURY 
 PRECEDING THE REVOLUTION. The English and French Revolutions, results of the workings of 
 the same principles. Comparative suddenness and violence of the French Revolution. 16. 
 First avowal of republican principles in France. How they were checked. Prevalent ideas 
 respecting popular rights. 17. Character andresults of the Insurrection of the Fronde. Ab- 
 solutism of Louis XIV., poverty of the people, and wealth of the nobility. 18. Exhaustion 
 f the kingdom, by persecutions of the Protestants, and the wars of Louis. Expedients to re- 
 plenish the treasury. Why the reign of Louis was, externally, one of glory to his country. 
 Cause of decline. Absolute monarchy unfavorable to the development of the highest talent. 
 19. The regency of the Duke of Orleans. Iniquitous measures for removing the public debt. 
 20. Political and moral character of the reign of Louis XV. Degraded state of the nobility. 
 Ecclesiastical tyranny and immorality. Low state of morals generally. General presentiment 
 of an approaching revolution. The system of absolute power worn out, and nothing to take 
 its place. 21. Struggle between the Jesuits and Legists. Abolition of the order of the Jesuits 
 the people begin to make common cause against the monarchy. 
 
 22. CAUSES OF THE DEVELOPMENT AND SPREAD OF FREE PRINCIPLES. Resistance to des- 
 potism increases with the advance of civilization. The three forms of despotism in feudal 
 France their contests with each other. Society afterwards divided into two classes the 
 privileged few, and the laboring many. The mastery at first obtained by the former. Various 
 ways through which the people strove for emancipation. 23. Opposition to sacerdotal tyranny :
 
 CHAP. XII] THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 317 
 
 Calvinism, Jansenism, Infidelity. 24. Influence of general literature in advancing the Revo- 
 lution. Great activity of the human intellect. Disquisitions of the French philosophers- 
 General tendency to republican principles. 25. Unhappy distinction of classes in France. 
 Selfish zeal of the higher classes to limit the royal authority. The exclusivencss and pride of 
 the aristocracy contributed to give to the Revolution its sanguinary character. Unyielding op- 
 position of parties and classes in France to the present day. 2G. Wretchedness of the peasant 
 population. City vagrants the part which they played in the Revolution. 
 
 27. LOFIS XVI. THE FIRST ACT IN THE DRAMA OF THE REVOLUTION. General restlessness 
 of the French people at the time of the accession of Louis XVI. Effects of the American 
 Revolution. 28. Character of Louis. 29. His ministers, &c. Opposition of the clergy and 
 nobility to reforms. Convocation of the States-General. Representation of the "Third 
 Estate." Results of the elections. The opening of the Revolution. 30. Indication of a change 
 of public feelings. 31. Unwise policy of the government. 32. Unwise policy of the nobility 
 and clergy. The National Assembly. Its measures. Success of the Commons in opposing the 
 royal edict. 33. Want of harmony in the Assembly. Formation of a monarchist party. The 
 national party. 34. Reformation of abuses, and adoption of a Constitution. Appropriation 
 of Church property. 35. The old Provinces changed into Departments, &c. Sovereignty of 
 the people established. The acts of the National Assembly highly praiseworthy. Its great 
 error, in excluding its members from the next legislature. 
 
 36. CHANGE IN THE CHARACTER OF THE REVOLUTION. Effects of the king's attempted, 
 escape, and the emigration of the nobility. Ultra character of the new Legislative Assembly. 
 37. Impolitic and vacillating conduct of the king. Important considerations that led the 
 Assembly to contemplate his deposition. 38. Manifesto of the allies abolition of royalty the 
 Girondists and the Mountainists. The leaders of the latter. 39. Motives of the Mountainists 
 in urging the condemnation of the king. 40. Sanguinary carreer of the Mountaiuists after the 
 execution of the king. Successive fall of the Girondists and Dantonists. 41. Napoleon's po- 
 litical sagacity compared with the course of the Dantonists. 42. Fall of the Mountaiuists, and 
 retrograde movement of the Revolution. 
 
 43. TERMINATION AND RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION. Military despotism a relief from 
 anarchy. Changes in public opinion. Beneficial effects of the Revolution. Onward tendency 
 of liberal principles. The fate of France, a warning to rulev i and people. 44. Important 
 moral standing armies no security to arbitrary power. Good government : the people the 
 only basis of power. 45. Salutary lesson to the friends of freedom. Unwise legislation 
 what institutions only can be permanent. French infidelity. The English Rebellion contrasted 
 with the French Revolution. Mild character of the former violence of the latter. The causes. 
 46. Ignorance the only reliable support of arbitrary power. Freedom naturally keeps pace 
 with the progress of knowledge and virtue. Attempt to stifle necessary reforms. What 
 qualities are necessary for the successful development of democratic institutiorts. What the 
 French people have overlooked, an'l what they have still to learn. 
 
 I. 
 
 1. The French Revolution is not only the great event of the 
 eighteenth century, but it stands out prominent on the page of history 
 as the most awful mural convulsion the world has ever known. We 
 are shocked and dismayed at the spectacle which it presents ; and 
 it is only by knowing both its causes and effects, that we can regard 
 it in any other light than as a great moral desolation, unconnected 
 with human agencies, which the almighty sent upon the earth as he 
 sends the deluge and the earthquake. But when the long train of 
 causes is brought to light, and beneath the fair exterior of society 
 the germs of a mortal disease are developed, we can think, and re- 
 
 52
 
 818 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAET HI. 
 
 fleet, and reason, on the catastrophe : we no longer wonder, although 
 we shudder at the wide waste of ruin that meets our view. 
 
 2. The acts of individuals, when external restraints have lost their 
 influence, are generally truthful developments of character ; and 
 nations have their character also, their leading traits of thought and 
 feeling; their passions, their virtues, and their vices. And if ever 
 the character of a nation showed itself, undissembled, on the surface 
 of its public life, then did that of France, in its worst aspects, during 
 the Revolution, when all the ancient landmarks were swept away, 
 and there was uo law, no government, no religion, but such as arose 
 from the effervescence of popular feeling, to restrain, and guide, and 
 govern society. The singular spectacle is presented of a professedly 
 Christian nation, occupying the front rank in civilization, rapidly 
 passing through all the phases of government from arbitrary rule 
 to the anarchy of democratic ascendency, and, in religion, from 
 Christianity to Atheism, tearing up the very foundations of society 
 guilty of excesses and crimes that would have disgraced a barba- 
 rous age ; and then, apparently, as rapidly returning to the point 
 from which it had departed. This seeming anomaly in the history 
 of nations is a great development of the inconstancy of French 
 character ; but it is by no means the whole of the French Revolu- 
 tion, which had its effects, great, and important, and lasting, as well 
 as its causes ; and it will ever form a prominent era in the page of 
 history, not only on account of the astounding events which marked 
 its progress, but also on account of the magnitude of the effects by 
 which it was followed. 
 
 3. In a previous article we endeavored to unfold to the reader the 
 principal elements of European civilization as they existed at the 
 close of that long and gloomy period usually denominated the " Dark 
 Ages." We briefly traced the attempts of theocracy, democracy, 
 aristocracy, and monarchy, separate and combined, to remodel and 
 govern society ; and we saw, at the close of the fifteenth century, 
 the monarchical principle prevailing, in that general centralization 
 of power which reduced all the elements of society to two the gov- 
 ernment and the governed. The view which we there took was a 
 general one ; but a correct understanding of later French History, 
 and especially of the great Revolution of 1789, renders important, as 
 the basis of our inquiries, a more minute examination of, first, the 
 growth and character of the French monarchy and nobility ; second,' 
 the origin of the (( Third Estate," or Commons ; third, the character
 
 CHAP. XII.] THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 819 
 
 and position of the Gallican Church ; and, fourth, the peculiarities 
 of early French legislation. 
 
 IT. 
 
 4. The political aspect which Gaul, the country now called France 
 presents to us on the first appearance of partial order, after the sub- 
 sidence of those mighty waves of barbarian inundation by 
 
 ... __ T _ . GHOWTH AND 
 
 which the Western empire or the liomans was overthrown, CHARACTER 
 is that of a large territory parcelled out among a great OF THE 
 number of petty barbarian lords who ruled with almost MOXARCHr 
 absolute sway over their vassals, the cultivators of the AND 
 soil, and who, themselves, were but the tenants, some- 
 times in the second, or third degree, of some military chieftain to 
 whom they had vowed fidelity and feudal allegiance. The chieftain 
 who, at the end of the fifth century, held this superior rank, was 
 Clovis, who was at the head of a confederation of Frankish tribes of 
 Germanic origin, which had spread themselves over Gaul ; and it was 
 Clovis who, as conqueror of the Romano-Gallic province, laid the 
 basis of that great European commonwealth which has exerted a 
 greater influence than any other on the destinies of modern Europe. 
 
 5. The kings of the race of Clovis, or, as they are called in history, 
 of the Merovingian race, a enjoyed few of the attributes of modern 
 sovereignty ; and the word king is less appropriate to them than the 
 Latin term imperator or consul. The king of the Franks was the 
 general of the nation : he was honored, followed, and supported 
 by his people, but he did not reign over them. All real dominion 
 was in the hands of the official, patriarchal, or military aristocracy, 
 the whole forming a complex sovereignty, in which government was 
 maintained by physical force, and submitted to by the people through 
 abject fear. 
 
 6. The Merovingian dominion was gradually subverted by the en- 
 croachments of the feudal aristocracy, from whom arose a chief, 
 Pepin, who became the founder of the Carlovingian dynasty. The 
 nobles had overturned the semblance of a throne, but it was merely 
 to give place to a ruler of their own order. Like many subsequent 
 and similar changes in French history, the overthrow of the Mero- 
 vingian dynasty was unattended by any progress in civilization, 
 because it was a change of external forms merely, without a corre- 
 
 a. The Frankish chiefs were called Meer-wigs, (that is, Sea Warriors ;) a title which they 
 transmitted to the first Frankish dynasty.
 
 820 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [1 AET IIL 
 
 spending development of intelligence and virtue. The ignorance, the 
 rapacity, and the barbarian character of the Merovingian dynasty, 
 was a barrier to the establishment of a moral dominion over the 
 people ; and barbarism leagued against and overthrew it. 
 
 7. The Carlovingian dynasty, whose dominion Charlemagne en- 
 deavored to establish on the basis of the revival of the Roman 
 power, and an alliance with the Church of Rome, was extended by 
 that powerful and enlightened monarch over a mighty empire ; but 
 it fell to pieces under his early descendants ; and the same nobles, or 
 barons, who had been been viceroys in the administration of his gov- 
 ernment, soon became the real sovereigns over their territories, and 
 rendered their power hereditary in their families. The unity of 
 royal dominion was again lost in the plurality of aristocratic chiefs 
 the greater feudatories of the realm while little but the name of 
 royalty remained as a bond of their common union. The Carlo- 
 vingian dominion was based on moral influences altogether in advance 
 of the character of the people ; and it failed because nothing but 
 arbitrary power was capable of ruling in that barbarous age. 
 
 8. For a time the feudal confederation ruled, and at length elected 
 one of their number, Hugh Capet, duke of the duchy of France, and 
 count of Paris, as their king, or feudal superior ; thinking that they 
 would make of him the key stone to the arch of their baronial power ; 
 while, in their own seigniories, they would be free from his authority 
 and control. They little thought that this pageant of royalty would 
 ever rise into a power by which their States would be subjugated, 
 and their posterity reduced to insignificance and want. Hugh Capet 
 inherited from his ancestors the duchy of France alone ; but by the 
 conquest and cession of various other fiefs, the royal domain was in 
 after times successively enlarged, until at last it embraced nearly the 
 whole of the more modern kingdom of France. Those fiefs that 
 did not belong to the royal domain were governed by their own 
 lords, who owed various feudal services to the king as their com 
 mon sovereign. 
 
 III. 
 
 9. An important cause which cooperated with royalty in over 
 
 throwing the power of the feudal lords or barons, was 
 ORIGIN OF . . ' 
 
 THE THIRD the springing up anew, out or the wrecks of the Romaii 
 
 ESTATE, oa world, of free towns or municipalities, which, by conces 
 
 sions from the feudal lords, and charters from the king. 
 
 obtained emancipation from the control of their former masters, free
 
 CHAP. XIL] THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 821 
 
 dom from taxation beyond a certain amount, without their own con- 
 sent, and, to a great extent, the right of self-government. Thus 
 the range of feudal power was narrowed, and its energy impaired, 
 by a transfer to these corporate bodies. The character of society 
 also was changed. In place of only two classes which before existed 
 the feudal proprietors and the laboring population a third was 
 interposed, as a mediating body, between them, serving both to 
 mitigate feudal tyranny, and to elevate the multitude, by extending 
 to them its own free spirit and policy. The aristocracy of commerce 
 which grew up in the towns was a counterpoise to the aristocracy of 
 hereditary descent ; and the traditional customs on which feudal do- 
 minion rested were gradually overborne by the municipal authority of 
 written law. Out of gratitude to the monarch, the free towns at first 
 sided with him against the barons ; and thus the tendency was towards 
 the overthrow of feudalism on the one hand, and the growth of royal 
 power on the other. These numerous municipalities, however, were 
 BO many petty republics scattered throughout a vast monarchy : and 
 although they had aided the king against the barons, they were des- 
 tined eventually to yield to the power which they had contributed to 
 elevate. Being hostile in spirit to the principles of royalty, the two 
 powers were often brought into collision, in which the monarch 
 possessed overwhelming advantages. Some of these municipalities 
 the city of Paris for instance resisted, but being widely dispersed 
 and isolated bodies, having no confederations for mutual defence, 
 having been accustomed, in their strictly municipal character, to the 
 exercise of no political powers, their privileges were gradually taken 
 away by the encroachments of royal authority, until, in the reign of 
 Louis XIV., they had fallen from the position of independent com- 
 monwealths, and become absorbed in the overwhelming dominion of 
 royalty, then the centralization of all political power in France. 
 After the lapse of more than a century, this part of the social system 
 reappears on the political arena as the long oppressed but indignant 
 commonalty, or " Third Estate," whose redemption was to be worked 
 out by the greatest of the revolutions through which France had yet 
 passed. 
 
 IV. 
 
 10. The Gallican Church, with all its power and influence, and 
 boasted freedom from papal jurisdiction, was early made politically 
 dependent upon the pleasure of the crown. Until the time of Francis
 
 822 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III 
 
 I. the Church was independent in the election of her bishops and 
 
 CHARACTER other great dignitaries ; but the concordat of Francis 
 
 AXD POSITION w ith the Pope Leo X. gave to the former the right of 
 
 OF THE 
 
 GALLICAN nominating bishops to every vacant See, and of making 
 CHURCH, appointments to every other ecclesiastical dignity ; and, 
 to the present time, the head of the French government, whether 
 royal, imperial, or republican, has held in its own hands the bestowal 
 of those offices. Another great encroachment upon the liberties of the 
 Church was that made by Philip the Fair, who, when Pope Boniface 
 VIII. commanded the attendance of all the French prelates at Rome, 
 issued an edict forbidding them to go beyond the limits of his own 
 dominions ; and, from that time it has been an established maxim 
 of the French jurists that no pontificial decree is binding on any 
 Frenchman without the previous sanction of the French monarch. 
 
 1 1. Originally the jurisdiction of the French ecclesiastical courts 
 was of great extent, embracing all offences that could be construed as 
 coming under the laws of God or in which sin might be imputed to 
 one of the litigants ; but the Church could neither fine, imprison, 
 torture, nor kill, and was thus obliged to call upon the temporal 
 power for the infliction of her penalties. After a time the temporal 
 powers hesitated to lend their aid until they were satisfied of the 
 justice of the sentence ; and thus arose the doctrine of the right of 
 reviewing the decisions of the ecclesiastical courts, and of correcting 
 any abuses that might be committed by them. And when, moreover, 
 the principles of the Justinian code were generally adopted in the 
 secular courts, and had become popular with the people, those courts 
 acquired a manifest advantage ; f and by these various causes the in- 
 fluence of the Church in temporal matters was gradually but perma- 
 nently impaired. 
 
 12. At first ecclesiastical persons and property in France were 
 exempt from all imposts ; and after a long period of controversy on 
 this subject it was finally established as a fundamental law of the 
 realm, so early as the reign of Charles VIII., that no Church prop- 
 erty could be taxed without the free consent of the ecclesiastical 
 order. The Church, however, seldom refused to aid the monarch in 
 cases of great exigency. In the reign of Louis XIV. the property 
 of the Church thus exempt from legal taxation had become of im- 
 mense value, the net income of it being estimated at ten or twelve 
 millions of pounds sterling. The Church had become, at this time, 
 politically, a vast moneyed corporation of tremendous power ; but
 
 CHAP. XII.] THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 823 
 
 the influence of the king, as its temporal head, in the appointment of 
 the officers, kept it within the restraints, and greatly under the control, 
 of royal authority. 
 
 V. 
 
 13. The peculiarities of early French legislation, and the manner 
 in which royal power gradually assumed to itself all legislative au- 
 thority, throws much light on the political state of France FECULIARI- 
 at the period of the Revolution. In feudal times, each TIES t)F 
 of the great feudal lords who held his fief directly from FRENCH 
 the crown was accustomed to hold a parliament of his LEGISLATION. 
 vassals, at which were adopted .all general regulations for the seig- 
 niorie or- province, and especially such as related to the raising of im- 
 posts. The king also at first held his parliament in like manner in 
 his own seigniorie ; but Louis VII. enlarged its influence by summon- 
 ing six of the greater barons and six dignitaries of the Church all 
 immediate vassals of the crown to aid him in such legislation as 
 concerned the interests of the whole realm. These royal counsel- 
 lors were designated peers of France, and this was the origin of 
 the French peerage. Louis IX. greatly enlarged this body by the 
 addition of knights and legistes, or men bred to the study of the law ; 
 when it assumed the distinctive title of Parliament of Paris, and, 
 under the control of the monarch, began to exercise extensive ju- 
 dicial as well as legislative functions. In various ways the order of 
 Nobility, or of French Peers, was enlarged, until, in the seventeenth 
 century, the Noblesse, comprising all those entitled to a seat in the 
 Parliament of Paris, was composed of many different and discordant 
 elements, of nobles by birth of nobles by patent nobles by office 
 and nobles by the possession of certain lands to which the rank of 
 nobility was inseparably attached. Of origins so diverse, these vari- 
 ous sections of the patrician order viewed each other with exceeding 
 jealousy ; while the privileges attached to their rank, at the expense 
 of the plebeian classes, made them the objects of hatred to the latter. 
 Although, in the reign of Louis XIV., almost entirely excluded from 
 any share in the conduct of public affairs, they had that which they per- 
 haps valued as highly as their titular distinctions. The laws generally, 
 were more favorable to them than to persons of ignoble rank : many 
 public offices were open to them alone : they were pensioned out 
 of the royal revenues : they alone were entitled to the rights of the 
 chase ; and they were exempt from all ordinary taxes. 
 
 14. In addition to the local parliaments in the various provinces
 
 824 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAET IIL 
 
 of the empire, and the central parliament of Paris, which originally 
 exercised jurisdiction only in the royal domain, on important occa- 
 sions the king ordered representatives to be sent to his parliament 
 by the sub-vassals of the first degree, and also representatives of the 
 inferior clergy throughout the kingdom. In addition to these repre- 
 sentatives of the nobility and the Church, the king commanded the 
 free male inhabitants of_ the municipalities, that is, of the villages, 
 towns, and cities, forming what has been called the " Tiers Etat" or 
 " Third Estate" in the realm, to elect deputies to represent them 
 also. The rural or country districts sent no deputies, because they 
 were supposed to be adequately represented by their respective lords, 
 whose tenants they were. The assemblage of all these representa- 
 tives was called the States- General of the realm, and, as a body 
 separate from the Parliament of Paris, appears to have been first 
 summoned by Philip the Fair in the year 1301. a The admitted 
 rights of the States-General went no farther than to petition for the 
 redress of grievances, and to grant taxes ; and even in the latter 
 case they were incapable of binding their constituents without their 
 consent ; b they had never any real legislative authority ; nor had the 
 monarchy any limitations in the enactment of laws except those im- 
 posed by feudal principles and public opinion. From Louis, the 
 Ninth to Louis the Sixteenth, France had no constitution ; and the 
 king was the real as well as the nominal lawgiver ; d although during 
 this period many ineffectual attempts were made to maintain the 
 authority of the representatives of the people, and to restrain the 
 usurpations of the royal power. Such was the general character of 
 the imperfectly -formed civil and political institutions of France, up 
 to the period of the beginning of the French Revolution the great 
 crisis in modern civilization. 
 
 VI. 
 
 15. If we now look at the current history of France during the cen- 
 tury preceding that event, we shall see how all the elements of society, 
 RELATIONS developed upon such a basis, contributed to the coming 
 BETWEEN catastrophe. The Reformation of the sixteenth century, 
 
 THE RULING ,.,,,.,,, ., , ,, . . -r-, 
 
 ORDERS AND which had violently agitated all Christian Europe, was 
 
 THE PEOPLE. an uprising of the people against mental bondage and 
 
 spiritual despotism, and, where most successful, as in England, it 
 
 hastened on the inevitable struggle for civil and political liberty. The 
 
 a. Hallam says 1305. b. Ilallam, 106. c. Do. Note, 103. d. Sir J. Stephen, 261.
 
 CHAP. XII.] THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 825 
 
 English Revolution of 1688 was a great moral and political move- 
 ment in carrying forward the principles which the Reformation had 
 left partially developed ; and it will be seen that the French Revo- 
 lution, a century later, was the result of the onward progress of the 
 same principles among a people scarcely less intelligent, but less 
 virtuous, less candid, and infinitely more passionate and impulsive. 
 In England the shock was divided, and its force consequently weak- 
 ened, by an interval of a century between the Reformation and the 
 Revolution ; but the Reformation had done little or nothing for 
 France, and the long gathering storm burst upon her all at once with 
 the desolating fury of the avalanche. 
 
 16. During the progress of the Revolution in England, republican 
 principles were, almost for the first time,' openly avowed in France, 
 being called forth by the arbitrary measures by which Mazarin, the 
 minister of the youthful monarch Louis XIV., then in his minority, 
 sought to replenish an exhausted treasury. The French parliament 
 first manifested opposition : vague ideas of liberty began to circulate 
 among the people of Paris always the centre of revolutionary ex 
 citement in France radical reforms were suggested, rather than 
 demanded, by the national councils ; and some, probably, entertained 
 the wish to imitate their insular neighbors ; but the catastrophe of 
 the opening drama of the English Revolution, which had begun with 
 civil war, and ended in regicide and despotism, deterred them from 
 entering on a like career. The court party were astonished at the 
 audacity of the reformers ; and the confident assurance of the former 
 is well exemplified in the question which the queen-mother put to 
 parliament, " Did it believe itself to possess the right of limiting the 
 king's authority ?" Even the republican writers of this period, (if 
 they may properly be called such,) were far from conceding to the 
 people any voice or share in the administration of the government, 
 asserting that " a veil should ever cover all that can be said or thought 
 upon the rights of subjects and the rights of kings, interests that can 
 never agree but in silence. " a Such were the political principles of 
 the French government a century before the Revolution. 
 
 17. The difficulties to which we have alluded, between the court 
 party and the parliament, led to the civil war, known in French his- 
 tory as the " Insurrection of the Fronde.'"' 1 It was the fate of this 
 insurrection, like most other attempts to establish liberty in France, 
 to be frustrated by the countenance which it received from the aris- 
 
 a. De Retz.
 
 S26 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 tocracy, who, gaining the lead, by affecting to adopt its principles, 
 perverted their influence to their own selfish purposes. After five 
 years of anarchy, the French seemed to take a sudden disgust to 
 freedom ; and when, in 1652, Louis XIV., who had then attained his 
 majority, entered Paris, and declared his will that the parliament 
 should no more presume to interfere with State affairs, the most 
 servile submission followed, and monarchy resumed its absolute sway 
 over France. In the Fronde the commons had united with the aris- 
 tocracy against ministerial oppression, as, in the times of feudal 
 tyranny, they had often served the cause of royalty against the barons. 
 But during the long reign of Louis XIV., both the commons and the 
 aristocracy are nearly lost sight of in the personal history of an arbi- 
 trary rather than despotic monarch ; and while the people were poor, 
 possessing scarcely a third part of the soil, and oppressed by feudal 
 services to their lords, tithes to the priests, and imposts to the king, 
 the nobles, fed and pampered in idleness, were receiving, in the pleas- 
 ures and favors of a dissipated court, the price of their dependence 
 1 8. The persecutions of the Protestants, and the revocation of the 
 edict of Nantes, which caused the emigration from France of fifty 
 thousand families, comprising the most industrious part of the popu- 
 lation, was a severe blow to the industry and wealth of the kingdom ; 
 while the expensive wars which Louis carried on against his neighbors 
 completed the exhaustion of both men and money. To meet the exi- 
 gencies of the times, letters of nobility were sold ; payments from 
 the treasury were made in adulterated coin ; and every iniquitous 
 expedient of taxation resorted to. That the era of Louis XIV. was, 
 externally, one of glory to his country, and that France maintained, 
 during his reign, a proud ascendency over surrounding nations, is 
 attributable not only to .the character of the monarch, but also to 
 the close alliance of the nobility with the throne, and the enthusiasm 
 of the people for their king, whose absolute power was hailed as the 
 guarantee of security and peace. But even while the monarchy was 
 at the summit of its prosperity, it was fast sowing the seeds of its 
 own dissolution. It has been observed that absolute monarchy is 
 unfavorable to the development of the highest talent ; and the dif- 
 ference between the early part and the close of the reign of Louis 
 will be found corroborative of this position. Conde, Turenne, and 
 Luxembourg, wJho contributed so much to the military renown of 
 Louis, were schooled in an age when the power of the monarch was 
 limited, in the license and difficulties of the Fronde ; but the glory
 
 CHAP. XIL] THE FREXCH REVOLUTION. 827 
 
 of the monarchy declined when its councils and its defence were in- 
 trusted to those who had been schooled in the maxims of arbitrary 
 power, and trained to servile submission to its dictates. 
 
 19. After the death of Louis, the government passed into the 
 hands of a regent, the Duke of Orleans, one of the nobility, with 
 whom the privileged orders strove to ally themselves, to regain that 
 power and influence in the government, of which they had been de- 
 prived. The absolutism that followed was that of aristocracy rather 
 than of monarchy ; although, in the end, the nobles, during the re- 
 gency, acquired little increase of influence. To get rid of the enor- 
 mous debts entailed upon the nation by Louis, a decree was issued, 
 requiring the public creditors to verify their bills : if their accounts 
 did not satisfy the court of commission, they were wholly rejected ; 
 and in this way the public debt was diminished by several hundred 
 millions. This measure being found so successful, the public creditors 
 were next summoned before the court, and on the charge of having 
 made unlawful gains, were nearly all of them thrown into prison, 
 from which they procured their release only by the payment of ex- 
 orbitant ransoms. The nobility succeeded in keeping the burden of 
 taxation upon the lower classes ; as evidence of which, it may be 
 mentioned that while the capitation tax, previously levied on all the 
 classes, was allowed to expire, the taxes imposed on plebeians only 
 were continued. A financial measure quite in harmony with the rest, 
 was a recoinage, by which government subtracted one-fifth from the 
 value of each piece, or nearly one-fifth of the entire circulating medi- 
 um of the kingdom. Never was spoliation by an oriental monarch 
 more barefaced ; and yet such tyranny, practiced by the ruling aris- 
 tocracy, was endured in the eighteenth century, and by one of the 
 most enlightened nations in Europe. 
 
 20. The political and moral character of the reign of Louis XV. 
 may be summed up in few words. The corruptions and injustice of 
 the preceding reign had degraded royalty, and Louis XV. brought 
 it still lower by his dissoluteness, while he weakened it by his pro- 
 fusion. The nobles, denied all share in the government, but retain- 
 ing their large estates, and surfeited with pensions as the price of 
 their submission, degraded their order in the eyes of the people by 
 their indolent and unambitious lives, and by sharing with the monarch 
 the contributions levied for his and their pleasures. The ecclesias- 
 tical power, taking the lead in oppression,* 1 while the priesthood ^as 
 
 a. Men of the highest rank were denied burial if they had not obtained billets of confession
 
 828 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 odious for its intemperance, ignorance, absurdities, and scandal, 
 brought reproach upon the very name and institution of religion. The 
 general state of morals was low in the extreme ; the chivalric senti- 
 ments of a former age had passed away ; the love intrigues of the court 
 were topics of common scandal ; and it is seldom that the morals of 
 the people are better than those of their masters. This Christian mon- 
 arch even went so far as to outrage morals and decency by connect- 
 ing with his court a royal seraglio ; and it was inadanie de Pompadour, 
 the favorite mistress of the monarch, who governed France in his 
 name ; it was she who appointed generals and bishops, proposed 
 laws and plans of campaigns ; and whose paramount influence spared 
 the shadow of a king the trouble of either thinking or speaking. But 
 with all the external quiet that appeared on the surface of society at 
 this period, in the endurance of oppression, Revolution was not slumber- 
 ing, but only waiting its time. Great moral and political convulsions 
 in the history of nations are usually heralded afar off by a growing 
 presentiment of some approaching crisis ; as the influence of the distant 
 cataract is felt in the increasing rapidity of the current, long before its 
 sound is heard. It was thus with the French Revolution. Its move- 
 ment was felt before the middle of the century ; and it was this that 
 induced the selfish remark of Louis XV. himself : " The monarchy 
 is very old, but it will last my time." Distrust, and dissatisfaction 
 with the existing state of things, pervaded the minds of ^11 classes ; 
 a change was felt to be inevitable, and all were laboring to produce 
 it, although none saw whither the tide of affairs was tending. While 
 society was growing into strength, and wealth, and activity, monarchy 
 was beginning to feel the decrepitude of age ; and even at the be- 
 ginning of the reign of Louis XV. the system of absolute power was 
 literally worn out, while in its place there were neither political insti- 
 tutions nor political habits to hold the frame-work of society together. 
 No wonder then that when the people took the government into their 
 own hands they knew not what to do with it, and that the engine of 
 their power became that of their destruction. 
 
 21. There was an almost continuous struggle during the reign of 
 Louis XV. between the parliament and the magistracy under the general 
 appellation of legists, on the one side, and Jesuits, and high church- 
 
 from the orthodox priesthood. (1750.) The Protestant Calas, for a pretended crime, was 
 doomed by the Catholic parliament of Toulouse to perish on the rack. The bitter sarcasm of 
 Voltaire, called forth by his hatred of the priesthood and the iniquity of the deed, covered the 
 parliament with shame, and with the public indignation. La Barre was executed, on the 
 charge of having broken down a wooden cross. (1768-9.)
 
 CHAP. XII.] THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 829 
 
 men of the Catholic faith, on the other. La Pompadour, the friend 
 of the philosophers, favored the opposition to sacerdotal authority ; 
 and by her influence the clergy were sometimes censured and exiled ; 
 but when parliament became too troublesome in its opposition to 
 taxes and fiscal edicts, tho magistrates were punished, and the Church 
 triumphed. While the quarrel between the Jesuits and the legists 
 continued to occupy public attention, the court was in great part 
 shielded from the effects of its unpopularity; but in 1764 the order 
 of the Jesuits was abolished, and its members banished from the 
 kingdom ; and soon after, Louis, in a quarrel with the parliament, 
 dispersed that body for its opposition to his wishes. Thus there was 
 nothing left to divert attention from the throne : the public discon- 
 tent was not long in designating arbitrary power and privilege as the 
 cause of the wide-spread evils under which the kingdom labored ; and 
 henceforth we find the great mass of the people, united by common 
 grievances, advancing together, and making common cause against 
 the monarchy. While the two privileged orders, the clergy and the 
 nobility, were the chief excitants of the popular odium, the crown 
 was made the point of attack, as being the true exponent of arbitrary 
 power and privilege. Such were the relations between the ruling 
 orders and the people, down to the beginning of the reign of Louis 
 XVI. The state of society, and the causes that developed and pro- 
 duced the spread of free principles, also require our notice. 
 
 VII. 
 
 22. Despotism, in some form, appears to be the government natural 
 to the condition of man in a rude state of society ; but it never fails 
 to be resisted, with the advance of intelligence and civil- CAUSES OF 
 ization. In feudal times its forms in France, and in THE DEVEL- 
 Western Europe generally, were three ; the hierarchy, 
 the nobility, and the corporations. The first was based OK 
 on the absurd claim of divine right; and the Church PKINCIPLKS - 
 arbitrarily governed the consciences of men because mankind were igno- 
 rant. The second was based on the necessity of mutual aid and protec- 
 tion against domestic enemies ; and the third on the plea of the im- 
 portance of encouraging and protecting industry by fraternal associa- 
 tions. These classes, long distinct, had many contests with each 
 other, as one or the other strove to acquire more than its share of 
 authority over the people ; but as the latter gradually emerged from 
 a state of serfdom, and lost their veneration for their oppressors, a
 
 830 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART ILL 
 
 new organization was effected, and society became divided into two 
 parties, often antagonistic, the privileged few and the laboring 
 many. The former at first obtained the mastery, and, dividing 
 among its members the spoils it had won, gave to the nobility the 
 monopoly of the soil, to the clergy the immense property that had 
 been confided to it in trust, and to the corporations all the profits of 
 industry. Monarchy also lent its aid to centralize in the hands of 
 one individual the power wielded by many rulers. But with the 
 dawnings of free inquiry the people strove for emancipation. At 
 first the Reformation exposed the unjust pretensions of the hierarchy : 
 science, in the writings of the economists, put forth the claims of 
 equality : literature gave freedom to thought ; humanity, in the works 
 of Voltaire and Rousseau and their co-laborers, claimed exemption 
 from unnecessary suffering ; and finally liberty demanded for the 
 people equal political rights and privileges with their oppressors. 
 The latter became the watchword of the Revolution. 
 
 23. Opposition to sacerdotal tyranny pursued a similar course, and 
 with a like result. The first show of resistance was Calvinism ; and 
 although the reformers were silenced at the stake, the new doctrines, 
 regarded as ignoble and disloyal, exerted an. influence that was never 
 entirely lost. Jansenism, a logical controversy between the follow- 
 ers of Jansenius and the Jesuits, about divine grace and other 
 points of religious faith, having been revived in the early part of the 
 eighteenth century, and dragged into the political field, became the 
 second stage in the opposition to the usurpations of the Church of 
 Rome. Opposed by the Pope, who found the royal authority arrayed 
 on his side, it was favored by those who sought freedom from the 
 arbitrary will of spiritual confessors. But Jansenism was timid and 
 compromising, and it failed. The next stand was that taken by wit 
 and learning, led on by a host of infidel writers, at the head of whom 
 were Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and D'Alernbert. The Church, 
 arbitrary and illiberal, vainly strove to present itself as a wall against 
 the advance of knowledge, long after it had lost the monopoly of in- 
 tellect : restraining liberty of thought, it would allow neither liberty 
 of speech nor of writing ; and the philosophers of the age, avoiding 
 an open conflict with its peculiar tenets, directed the shafts of their wit 
 and sarcasm against all religious faith and worship, unjustly draw- 
 ing the portraiture of religion from the conduct of its unworthy pro- 
 fessors ; and not only were the intolerance and tyranny of the priest- 
 hood overthrown by the exposure of the ignorance and corruption of
 
 CHAT. XIL] THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 831 
 
 the national Church, but, by these insidious attacks, the people were 
 led to look with disgust upon the very name and institution of re- 
 ligion, so that, long before the Revolution, public sentiment was fully 
 prepared for the triumph of infidelity. However difficult it may 
 have been to separate the cause of true religion from that of Roman- 
 ism, the Roman Catholic priesthood of France must share with the 
 philosophers the guilt of the impiety and demoralization that shocked 
 the world in the scenes of the Revolution. 
 
 24. We come next to the influence of general literature in ad 
 vancing the Revolution. The reign of Louis XIV. has been called 
 the era of the fine arts ; that of Louis XV. was the era of philosophy; 
 while both united to characterize that of Louis XVI. as the age of 
 reform. The scholars of the seventeenth century had aroused the 
 human mind to put forth its most vigorous efforts ; and a spirit of 
 ardent and enthusiastic research in all the departments of literature 
 followed. As was natural, politics and religion the condition and 
 destiny of man here and hereafter, became prominent topics of in- 
 vestigation. A surprising freedom of discussion on governments and 
 religion, laws and their abuses, took place. Nothing was said of the 
 government of France, or of the condition of the people : no attack 
 was yet made on the monarchy : the disquisitions of the philosophers 
 were couched in general terms. Voltaire was allowed to attack vulgar 
 errors and prejudices in politics, and to make religion the subject of 
 derision and obloquy, without the remote suspicion that he was under- 
 mining the foundations of the French monarchy on the one hand, and 
 of papacy on the other. Rousseau, in his celebrated work on the 
 Social Contract, led the people to investigate the natural rights of 
 man and the claims of authority : Montesquieu, in his Spirit of Laws, 
 has the merit of making political science a favorite study ; and Diderot 
 and D'Alembert, the principal editors of the Encyclopedias, published 
 in 1731, embodied the current philosophy of the age in a systematic 
 form. Not only the people, but the court, the nobility, and the clergy 
 also, were captivated by the novelty and brilliancy of the ideas de- 
 veloped ; they repeated the arguments against exclusive privileges, 
 without ever suspecting that they would be the first victims of the 
 new philosophy ; and a rigorous and enlightened public opinion was 
 formed, tending not only to free, but to republican principles. Public 
 attention was turned, with glowing admiration, upon the spirit and 
 freedom of the republics of antiquity ; the names of the ancient sages, 
 and lawgivers, patriots, and heroes, were on the lips of all ; and a
 
 832 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTO-RY. [PAET III 
 
 happy classical allusion to such, by a public speaker, was sure to 
 call forth tumultuous applause. 
 
 25. A cause that insensibly led on, and gave virulence to the spirit 
 of Revolution, was the distinction of classes in France, which was 
 more marked than in any other country of Europe. The distinction 
 between noble and plebeian was originally founded in conquest, first 
 by the arms of the conquering Roman, and then of the conquering 
 Frank : the nobility, if not the direct descendants, were at least the 
 representatives of the Teutonic conquerors of Gaul : they claimed 
 everything by right, while, to the Gallic plebeians the serfs of feudal 
 times, since become the " race of freedmen," everything was deemed 
 a favor, and all rights, concessions from former masters. The laws 
 and institutions of France were calculated to perpetuate an unhappy 
 distinction that was founded in the characters of different races. 
 While the subjugated Gaul was subtle, insinuating, courteous, volatile, 
 vain, and reckless; the German Frank was haughty, cold, and 
 formal, selfish and calculating ; and between characters so diverse, 
 amalgamation, social or political, was of tardy growth. While in 
 Englant! the privileges of rank descended to the eldest son only, in 
 France they were shared by all the children, and the consequence 
 was a complete separation of the higher andjower orders, so marked 
 that there was no passing from one side of the line to the other. 
 And although at the commencement of the Revolution, the parlia- 
 ment, the nobles, and the clergy, were foremost in zeal to limit the 
 royal authority, it must be remembered that they were by no means 
 anxious to curtail their own privileges : they would have raised a 
 titled nobility above the throne, and placed themselves at a still farther 
 remove from the people. With the exception that a common en- 
 thusiasm for liberty in the abstract animated all classes, the haughty 
 nobility and the oppressed peasantry were as far apart as ever ; and 
 it was this arbitrary and unyielding separation this hateful pride of 
 the aristocracy which spurned the base-born and ignoble, that con- 
 tributed powerfully to give the Revolution its sanguinary character. 
 In the Reign of Terror the cry of " an aristocrat !" was the most fatal 
 of all accusations. A war of classes partakes much of the character of 
 a war of castes or of races ending only with the extermination of one 
 of the parties. And it was not until seventy thousand of the French 
 nobility had been driven beyond the frontiers, and the remainder, 
 almost to a man, had fallen beneath the axe of the guillotine, that 
 the fury of the revolutionists abated, for want of victims. The same
 
 CHAP, XJL] THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 833 
 
 distinction of classes and parties has, ever since, stood in the way of 
 successful representative government in France. The monarchic 
 aristocratic, and democi'atic elements, have labored and fought for 
 the exclusion and the destruction of each other : a variety of petty 
 isms, equally intolerant, has since arisen to keep the social fabric 
 in constant agitation ; and while their exclusiveness remains, all rep- 
 resentative government, which is based on mutual concessions and 
 compromise, will be temporary and turbulent. 
 
 26. The progressive increase of wealth, and the general prosperity 
 of the country previous to the Revolution, in consequence of the ad- 
 vance of civilization, is sometimes cited as proof that the people had 
 no serious grievances to complain of. But while it is true that the mid- 
 dling classes the smaller landed proprietors, tradesmen, and artisans, 
 were acquiring some degree of wealth, in spite of the obstacles to their 
 advancement, the lower ranks, including the great mass of the people, 
 
 .were in a state of indigence and suffering, occasioned by years of 
 oppression and misrule, while the increasing lights that shone in 
 upon them, discovering their wretchedness and its causes, made them 
 discontented, and exasperated against their oppressors. Added to 
 this, the peasant population had already reached the limits which the 
 country in its wretched state of agriculture could sustain ; and a 
 crowd of vagrants was thrust upon the towns, or left to vegetate in 
 idleness in their native places, eking out a scanty subistence by petty 
 plunder, shunning observation in times of quiet, but forward and 
 furious in every civil commotion. At a later period we find this, 
 wretched class of the population everywhere throughout France the 
 ready instruments of Jacobin vengeance pouring forth its thousands 
 from the faubourgs of Paris at every sound of sedition swelling the 
 numbers of the mob at Versailles clamoring for bread at the doors 
 of the National Assembly, and, in the Reign of Terror, adding the 
 ferocity of famine to the horrors of Revolution. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 27. At the time of the accession of Louis XVI. to the throne, the 
 nation had not only become weary of arbitrary power, iovis XVI 
 but it began to be restless and uneasy under its burdens. THE FIRST 
 Many of the young nobility, fired with the spirit of freedom, 
 
 went to assist the Americans in their struggle for indepen- 
 dence: the king, jealous of the power of England, and urged 
 on by public opinion, took the dangerous step of aiding the insurgents 
 
 53
 
 834 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 whose success shook the foundations of despotism in the Old World. 
 The French monarchy, more than any other, felt the shock : a uni- 
 versal enthusiasm for republican institutions pervaded the nation : 
 the court and the nobility, with a strange fatuity, seemed to have 
 combined for their own destruction, to establish a new order of things; 
 and when, beneath the whole, the French people compared their griev- 
 ances with those of the Americans, and found they had much greater 
 cause of complaint than those they were aiding to be free, they were 
 disposed to make a practical application of the principles which others 
 merely admired in theory. 
 
 28. The character of Louis XVI. was such as poorly qualified him 
 for carrying the nation through the approaching crisis. Pure in 
 morals, humane and beneficent, amiable and estimable in private life, 
 but feeble in resolution, hesitating, and distrustful of himself, he 
 never would have occasioned, nor had he the power to resist a Revo- 
 lution. His own security and the peace of the country, required of 
 him firmness of purpose and energy of will ; for it was necessary for 
 him to compel the privileged classes to submit to reforms, or the 
 nation to abuses ; but Louis was incapable of being either a reformer 
 or a despot. Ever vacillating between the nobility and the people, 
 he gave a bold adhesion to neither party, and both eventually 
 abandoned him. 
 
 29. In the beginning of his reign Louis had the misfortune to 
 choose for his counsellor the aged Maurepas, a courtier of the age 
 of Louis XV., whose vacillating policy increased the irresolution of 
 the king. More successful in the choice of his ministers Turgot, 
 Malesherbes, and Necker, in the various departments of State gov- 
 ernment, he might have at least softened the asperities of the Revo- 
 lution if he had adopted the reforms proposed by them ; but these 
 men were suffered to b$ driven from their places by the opposition 
 of the higher clergy and the nobles, who were interested in per- 
 petuating the existing abuses. For a time the courtiers around the 
 throne directed the government : the reforms that had been begun 
 were arrested, and old abuses revived, to the gratification of the aris- 
 tocracy and the angry discontent of the people. Calonne, the next 
 minister of finance, adopted a new system of political economy, which 
 was, to encourage industry by expenditure ; but his prodigality 
 plunged the nation still deeper in debt, and ruined the credit of the 
 government. The treasury was empty, and it became necessary to 
 resort anew to taxes ; but the people were unable to pay, and the no-
 
 CHAP. XII. I THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 835 
 
 bility would not. A series of contentions between the court and the 
 parliament of Paris, in the pressing demand for new imposts or loans 
 and their rejection by that assembly, was terminated by a convoca- 
 tion of the States-General, or National Legislature, to take into con- 
 sideration the state of the nation. All parties united in demanding 
 their convocation the parliaments of the provinces because they 
 hoped to rule them ; the nobles because they hoped to regain their 
 lost influence ; and the Commons because they hoped to rise into po- 
 litical importance through their instrumentality. The meetings of 
 this great assembly, composed of representatives from the whole 
 nation nobles, clergy, and commons, had been suspended more than 
 a century and a-half. When previously convoked the representatives 
 }f the three estates had generally been equal in number ; but, as a 
 concession to the growing importance of the' commons, who now com- 
 prised all the industrious classes, it was decided, after much resist- 
 ance from the nobility, that the " third estate" should be entitled to 
 as many representatives as the other two. This measure, attributed 
 to Necker, has been censured by the royalist writers as highly im- 
 politic, while, by the republicans, it has been regarded both as a mat- 
 ter of justice and of necessity. In the elections which followed, the 
 nobility chose men devoted to the interests of their order ; the clergy 
 divided their influence the bishops and abbots voting for those 
 favorable to their privileges, and the curates showing themselves 
 favorable to the popular cause, which was their own ; while the com- 
 mons chose a body of representatives strong in talent and energy, 
 firm in their attachment to liberty, and ardejitly desirous of extend- 
 ing the influence of the people. By the convocation of the States- 
 General the powers of government were virtually given back to 
 their sources ; and the 5th of May, 1789, the day of the opening of 
 that assembly, was the opening of the drama of the Revolution. 
 
 30. An incident which occurred at the opening of the States-Gen- 
 eral was a significant indication of the change which had already 
 taken place in the feelings and views of the people. Hitherto the 
 representatives of the " third estate" had always sat bareheaded in 
 the presence of the monarch, while the clergy and nobles sat covered : 
 when addressing the king the orators of the latter stood up, but the 
 orator of the " third estate" knelt down. On the present occasion, 
 when Louis, seating himself on his throne, put on his hat, the three 
 orders covered themselves at the same time. The days were past
 
 836 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART IIL 
 
 when the commons were to bare their heads and bend their knees at 
 the approach of royalty. 
 
 31. The addresses of the king and his ministers were listened to 
 with profound silence and attention, for the policy of the government 
 was to be gathered from them , but the chagrin of the commons was 
 extreme when it was evident to them that the government desired no 
 great innovations, and that its object was the obtaining of subsidies, 
 and not the reformation of abuses. 
 
 32. The events which followed showed equal want of policy and 
 foresight in the nobility and clergy. Determined to maintain the 
 old distinctions of classes, they refused to unite with the commons 
 in one deliberative body ; and the latter, after waiting five weeks for 
 the two orders to join them, boldly declared themselves the National 
 Assembly, and decreed the indivisibility of the legislative power. 
 They then entered upon the business of legislation. They struck a 
 blow at arbitrary power by declaring the illegality of imposts : they 
 reassured capitalists by consolidating the public debt; and they 
 showed their sympathy for the sufferings of the people by appointing 
 a committee of subsistence. Still the nobles and high clergy held 
 out, and the king gave himself up to their counsels. In a royal sitting 
 held the 23d of June, he condemned the conduct of the Assembly, 
 annulled its resolutions, declared his determination to preserve the 
 orders, and then commanded the deputies to separate. The com- 
 mons disobeyed, persisted in their decrees declared the inviola- 
 bility of the members; and the royal authority, attempting too 
 much, was lost. The eourt had provoked resistance, but dared not 
 punish it. The king wavered, but finally requested the nobles and 
 clergy to unite with the commons ; and thus their deliberations be- 
 came general. By this success of the commons a great advance was 
 made in the progress of the Revolution. 
 
 33. It was evident from the first that there could be little harmony 
 of action between the two marked divisions of the Assembly. The 
 clergy wished to preserve their privileges and their opulence ; and 
 the nobles, although they were to resume political independence, of 
 which they had long been deprived, saw that they would be compelled 
 to yield more to the people than they would gain from the monarch ; 
 and the two orders were induced to coalesce with the court against 
 the people, as they had formerly united with the people against the 
 court. When the force of public opinion rendered it certain that the 
 Revolution must go onward, a portion of the nobles and the bishops,
 
 CHAP. XII] THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 837 
 
 following Necker, who bad declared for the English constitution, 
 wished to effect such reforms as could not be avoided, by accommo- 
 dation ; to preserve the aristocracy, and to establish an " Upper 
 Chamber" of the legislative body, of which they should be members. 
 They formed the party subsequently called monarchists. The rest 
 of the Assembly, forming the national party, differing from the mon- 
 archists in many respects, were sincerely desirous of carrying reforms 
 to the full extent of justice, but without any thoughts of overturning 
 the monarchy. Those who, at n subsequent period, desired a second 
 Revolution, when the first had been accomplished, had not yet ac- 
 quired any political distinction. 
 
 34. As France had no constitutional government, and the want of 
 one was universally felt by the people, the Assembly had a double 
 duty to perform first, the reformation of abuses ; and, second, the 
 adoption of constitutional guards against their recurrence. During 
 two years the Assembly devoted itself to these objects, often en 
 countering the most vehement opposition, but, in the end, overcoming 
 all obstacles. Impelled by the bankruptcy of the government, the 
 Assembly took the important step of appropriating to the use of the 
 nation the immense property that, from time to time, had been con- 
 fided in trust to the Church for the benefit of religion. It was urged 
 by the advocates of the change that the nation thereby merely changed 
 the trust, taking upon itself the charge of the ecclesiastical service 
 the care of hospitals the endowment of ministers, &c. Not only 
 the reformers of a previous' age, but also some of the ablest advo- 
 cates of Church prerogative, had long ere this advanced the opinion 
 that the'.clergy were the mere trustees, and the State itself the true 
 proprietor of such endowments.* 1 Although this measure of the 
 Assembly was indeed one of pressing expediency, its justice was 
 strongly denied, and from this moment the hatred of the clergy to 
 the Revolution was bitter and unyielding. 
 
 35. A change of greater political importance was that by which 
 the old provinces into which France was divided in feudal times were 
 changed into eighty-three departments these into districts and then 
 into cantons, the latter of which designated the electors who chose 
 the members of the National Assembly. The parliaments of the old 
 provinces, the nobles, and the clergy, protested against this new di- 
 vision of the realm, and brought all their influence against it, but the 
 commons prevailed, and established the government on its legitimate 
 
 a. 8 epheu, 348.
 
 838 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PART III. 
 
 basis the sovereignty of the people. The people were made the 
 source of all power, and its exercise was intrusted to their repre- 
 sentatives : long-standing grievances were redressed : political equal- 
 ity was established among the citizens, to the exclusion of aristocratic 
 privileges ; and ample guards were thrown around the administration 
 of justice. The Assembly had put down despotism on the one hand, 
 and anarchy on the other : it had defeated the intrigues of the clergy 
 and the nbbility, and maintained the subordination of the populace : 
 it had given to France a well-regulated constitutional government ; 
 and if the Revolution had terminated here, at the close of the first 
 Act in the drama, it might perhaps have been sustained, although 
 still in advance of the character of the people. It had accomplished 
 its legitimate objects, and, as a whole, met the approval of all true 
 patriots, and of the friends of freedom throughout the world. Let 
 not its character be stained by the turbulent and sanguinary scenes 
 which followed. It is not responsible for the horrors of the Reign 
 of Terror. If it erred in anything, it was in attributing to the 
 French people greater virtue and stability than they possessed in 
 supposing them better qualified, than they were, for the enjoyment 
 of that freedom which the Revolution was calculated to bestow. But 
 the Assembly erred fatally erred in excluding its members from, 
 the next national legislature, thereby depriving France of the benefit 
 of their experience, and leaving the Revolution to be commenced 
 anew. They constructed the machine of government, perfect in its 
 parts and harmonious in its proportions, but they left its movement 
 to be regulated by unskilful hands ; and the work which two centuries 
 had been preparing, in one brief year fell to pieces under the blows 
 of a turbulent democracy. 
 
 IX. 
 
 36. Two causes which, at this period, were greatly influential in 
 changing the character of the Revolution, were the king's 
 
 . . . CHANGE IN 
 
 attempted escape from the kingdom, and the emigration THE CHARAO- 
 of the nobility. The primary elections for members of TER OF THE 
 the next legislature began when the king's flight had 
 withdrawn from him the confidence of the nation ; and the emigra- 
 tion of the nobles, and large landed proprietors, amounting, at this 
 time, with their families, to nearly one hundred thousand souls, de- 
 prived France, at an important crisis, of those who might have ex- 
 erted a great influence in moderating democratic ardor, and who were
 
 CHAP. XII] THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 839 
 
 the most deeply interested in standing by their sovereign and the 
 constitution. But, from the first they had opposed every species of 
 improvement, and they consummated their baseness by leaguing with 
 the enemies of their country. The new legislative assembly, which 
 met in Oct. 1791, chosen under these circumstances, was composed 
 of materials very different from the former. In it the property of 
 France was unrepresented : the members were, emphatically, new 
 men, unaccustomed to the exercise of political power, and seeking to 
 recommend themselves to their constituents by the vehemence with 
 which they supported the principles of democracy. Royalty and 
 aristocracy were without a party in the legislature, and it was not 
 long before the only question that remained was, the maintenance or 
 the overthrow of the constitutional throne. 
 
 37. The conduct of the king was no less impolitic than that of the 
 nobility and clergy. Placed, by the force of circumstances which he 
 could not control, in a false position, he acted a borrowed part, and 
 was compelled to conceal his real sentiments, while he despised 
 hypocrisy. He continually vacillated between his fears and his 
 hopes his fears that the Revolution would prevail, and his hopes 
 that foreign intervention would crush it. Buoyed up by hope he 
 treated the Revolutionary party with coldness and haughtiness : de- 
 jected by fear, he strove to conciliate, and submitted to the demands 
 of the Assembly, but in so wavering a manner that no confidence was 
 placed in his promises. When first waited upon by a committee of 
 the Legislative Assembly he was unprepared to receive them, and, 
 through his minister, gave them so unceremonious a dismissal, as 
 deeply to wound the feelings of the deputation. A few days later 
 he met the Assembly in the most friendly manner, and assured it of 
 his cordial cooperation. He was jealous and distrustful of the only 
 party in the Assembly on which he could rely the constitutional- 
 ists and, while seeking to gain their support, never yielded himself 
 to their confidence. Hoping for more favorable times, his plan was 
 to play the parties against each other, and thus, by discord, to weaken 
 the Revolution. While he openly condemned the conduct of the 
 emigrants, he refused his Sanction to any measures of the Assembly 
 against them. Jealous of that true republican and constitutionalist, 
 Lafayette, he caused his opponent, Petion, the Girondist candidate, 
 to be elected mayor of Paris ; and, at a later period, when Lafayette 
 would have put down the reign of the Jacobin clubs, the king's dread 
 of the triumph of the constitutionals was the cause of the failure.
 
 840 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAET III 
 
 While he assented to the war against the coalition, it was too evident 
 that his heart was not in the measure ; and the charge was not with- 
 out foundation that he had used the power and influence which his 
 position gave him to paralyze the national defence. The country was 
 in danger of invasion for the avowed object of turning back the tide 
 of revolution restoring the nobles and the clergy to their privileges, 
 and the king to his supremacy. Could then a king, whose hopea 
 were in the success of the invasion, be relied upon to conduct the de- 
 fence of the nation ? It was these considerations that led the As- 
 sembly to contemplate his deposition, and to take into its own hands 
 the executive powers of government. 
 
 38. While the king was thus weakening his influence with the na- 
 tion, the impolitic manifesto of the allies, under the Duke of Bruns- 
 wick, by openly espousing the cause of the monarch, and placing 
 him in seeming opposition to his people, rendered the fall of the 
 throne certain. The National Convention, which assembled on the 
 20th September, 1 792, during its first sitting abolished royalty, pro- 
 claimed the republic, changed the calendar, and decreed the begin- 
 ning of a new era. Then began the disputes between the leading 
 parties of the Convention the Girondists and the Mountain.ists a 
 each, in the rivalry of power, striving for supremacy, and each claim- 
 ing the Revolution as its own. The Girondists, upright in their in- 
 tions, repugnant to violent measures, indignant at the massacre of 
 September, secretly desirous of saving the life of the king, but afraid 
 of being reproached as royalists, and enemies of the people, and 
 averse to the rule of the multitude, would have been constitutionals 
 if the course of events had not forced them to be republicans. As 
 it was, they stood between the middle classes and the multitude, 
 (higher classes there were none,) but, allying themselves with neither, 
 they lost the favor of both, and were soon overthrown. The Moun- 
 tainists, on the contrary, were the " Red Republicans" of the day : 
 of less political intelligence, and of ruder eloquence than their op- 
 ponents the Girondists, but less scrupulous, more sagacious, more 
 enthusiastic, and more decided ; they courted the populace, controlled 
 the clubs of the Jacobins, ruled absolute in Paris, and carried their 
 political principles to the very extreme of democracy. Marat the 
 apostle of massacre, and the tyrant Robespierre, were their leaders. 
 
 29. The motives which led the Mountainists to urge the condem- 
 nation of the king, were those of party, and of popular animosity,, 
 
 a. So called because they occupied the highest seats in the Convention.
 
 CHAP. XII.] THE FREXCH KEVOLUTION. 841 
 
 Having their sympathies with the lower classes, through whom alone 
 they hoped to acquire and retain power, they were unwilling that the 
 Girondists, who would have established the government of the middle 
 classes, should organize the Republic. Besides, the mob, which then 
 governed Paris, wrought up to a pitch of frenzy by the Jacobin ora- 
 tors, was clamorous for the death of the king ; and the Mountain 
 seized upon it as a means of gratifying their followers, gaining the 
 ascendency for themselves, and insuring the destruction of their rivals 
 the Girondists. 
 
 40. The execution of the kind-hearted but weak monarch impelled 
 the Mountainists to still greater extremes of fanaticism and violence. 
 They had gone too far in crime to turn back ; they had declared 
 their principles, and must abide by them, or lose all. They had dis- 
 carded moderate measures, rendered parties irreconcilable, and 
 greatly multiplied the external enemies of the Revolution ; and it 
 was only by exciting still higher the passions of the mob, and urging 
 forward the reign of violence in the name of liberty, equality, and 
 fraternity, that they could hope for temporary success, or even safety 
 to themselves. The fall and execution of the Girondists was the 
 commencement of the Reign of Terror. The fall of Danton and his 
 associates followed, because, thinking the Revolution had gone far 
 enough, they showed themselves less sanguinary than the opposing 
 faction headed by St. Just and Robespierre. 
 
 41. At a later period, Napoleon, under circumstances not very 
 dissimilar, showed himself possessed of less virtue, but of greater 
 political sagacity, than the Dantonists. When, placed at the height 
 of consular power, it was suggested to him that the French govern- 
 ment, guided by his genius, and sustained by the arms of thirty 
 millions of inhabitants, was already sufficiently prominent among 
 the European powers to maintain a highly honorable position in 
 peace, Napoleon replied, " It must be first of all, or it will perish." 
 From the commencement of his military career his opinion was 
 " that, if stationary, he would fall ; that he was sustained only by 
 continually advancing, and that it was not sufficient to advance, but 
 he must advance rapidly and irresistibly." " My power," said he, 
 " depends on niy glory, and my glory on the victories which I gain. 
 Conquest mad 3 me what I am : conquest alone can sustain me." 
 Had Napoleon stopped at the period of his greatest triumphs, while 
 the movement of the revolutionary car was still onward, he would 
 have been crushed beneath its wheels. The Dantonists, shocked at 
 
 54
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PAET III 
 
 their own excesses, stopped short in their guilty career, and the mad 
 torrent of the Revolution overwhelmed them. 
 
 42. St. Just, Robespierre, and their associates of the Mountain 
 party, maintained themselves until the wave had spent its fury. 
 With their fall the Reign of Terror ended, and an opposite move- 
 ment commenced : the Convention, and, by degrees, the whole Re- 
 public, were liberated from fear. As in the progress of the Revo- 
 lution the most moderate of the ruling factions had ever been the first 
 to be overthrown, so in its retrograde movement it passed back 
 through the same changes, destroying all who had contributed to its 
 advancement beyond ' the bounds of reason and justice ; the ac- 
 complices of Robespierre, the judges of the revolutionary tribunals 
 the Jacobin clubs the Mountainists the Girondists being suc- 
 cessively overthrown, until the government of the multitude was at 
 an end, and the Revolution rested with the middling classes, where 
 it had originated. Guilt sooner or later brings its own punishment, 
 and visits upon the erring the consequences of their folly. So it was 
 with the fanatics of the French Revolution : all perished in the fires 
 which they themselves had lighted, and none lamented their fate. 
 
 X. 
 
 43. It has appeared surprising to many that after so long and 
 
 violent a struggle against arbitrary power and privilege, 
 
 TERMINATION _ _ _, / n i -i 
 
 AND RESULTS the Revolution finally terminated m military despotism. 
 OF THE But nothing was more natural. The French people had 
 
 EEVOLCT10N. , j ,1 -j f vi~ m -, 
 
 entertained the most erroneous ideas ot liberty. Taking 
 all the power of government into their own hands, and intrusting its 
 exercise to their favorites, they anticipated the full enjoyment of free- 
 dom, but soon found themselves oppressed by the most galling 
 tyranny. After having been successively the prey of all the ruling 
 factions, they looked with reasonable hope to the sovereignty of Na- 
 poleon for a relief from anarchy, and security against foreign ene- 
 mies. Ten years of revolutionary violence produced greater changes 
 in public opinion than a century of peaceful experience would have 
 done ; and in 1 799 the nation was as anxious to terminate the Revo- 
 lution as in 1789 it had been to commence it. But although it 
 voluntarily surrendered public liberty to the care of a military 
 chieftain, it did not throw away all that had been gained. The 
 Revolution had broken down the barriers of classes ; had permanent- 
 ly reformed many abuses ; had strengthened civil liberty ; had re-
 
 CHAP. XII.] THE FRENCH REYOLUTIOX. 843 
 
 modeled society on a more social basis ; and, by its influence in over- 
 coming national barriers, and mingling together the people of Europe 
 by frequent communication, had advanced the cause of civilization. 
 As knowledge increases, and the tide of liberal principles rolls on- 
 ward, it seems unavoidable that every other kingdom of Europe must, 
 in its turn, become the battle-ground of freedom ; and with the ex- 
 ample and the fate of France before us, we may well raise the 
 warning cry, " wo to those rulers who do not make timely concessions 
 to the spirit of enlightened reform ; and wo to that people whose 
 democratic zeal outruns the regulating principle of Christian recti- 
 tude." 
 
 44. The French Revolution has an important moral, both for the 
 upholders of royal prerogative, and the friends of human freedom. 
 Hitherto the chief reliance of arbitrary power has been on standing 
 armies, ever regarded as the most efficient instrument of despotism ; 
 but the French Revolution has shown that even they may be tainted 
 with the love of freedom, or, if they do not fraternize with the people, 
 they are swept away as straws before the hurricane blast of de- 
 mocracy. The sovereigns of Europe have learned the lesson, how- 
 ever reluctant to put it in practice, that their only permanent securi- 
 ty is in such a government as will promote the welfare and secure 
 the affections of the people. They are compelled to admit that the 
 people form the basis of their power, and that if they cannot natter 
 or cajole them, they have no alternative but to yield to their de- 
 mands. 
 
 45. The French Revolution has also given a salutary lesson to the 
 friends of freedom. It has shown that the best of men have need to 
 exercise great moderation in revolutionary times : it has developed 
 the truth that all people are not prepared for the full enjoyment of 
 regulated liberty ; and it has illustrated the dangers to be apprehend- 
 ed from the turbulence of democratic ascendency. The public circuit 
 through which the Revolution travelled, and the subsequent history 
 of France, show how futile it is for a nation to legislate in advance 
 of its character ; for those institutions only can be permanent which 
 are the spontaneous productions of the physical, intellectual, and 
 moral culture of the people. The overthrow of religion in France 
 is often attributed to the immorality of the people ; but it would be 
 nearer the truth to assert that the immorality of the people and the 
 horrors of the " Reign of Terror" are to be attributed to the previous 
 almost total absence of the spirit of Christianity. There was little
 
 844 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. [PABT III. 
 
 true religion, to be overthrown at the time of the Revolution, for 
 France was infidel at heart long before the national apostasy was 
 publicly proclaimed. The great difference between the comparative- 
 ly mild aspect of the English Rebellion and the sanguinary character 
 of the French Revolution consists in this, that religion was the 
 moving instrument in the former, and irreligious fanaticism in the 
 latter. Under the republican banners of Puritan zeal, no proscrip- 
 tions, no massacres, took place ; but little blood was shed on the 
 scaffold ; and, after the strife was over, the victors and the vanquished 
 lived peaceably together, the result having produced little change in 
 the relations of society. The French Revolution, on the contrary, 
 was marked by violence and stained with blood, not because the 
 people were ignorant, but because they were depraved. It was not 
 the Revolution that made them so. Had the Reformation done for 
 them what it did for England, they might have passed through the 
 conflict between democracy and despotism as honorably as their in- 
 sular neighbors. But Roman Catholic France was corrupt ; dis- 
 claiming the God of Revelation, she was abandoned by Him, and her 
 degradation and her punishment followed. 
 
 46. Throughout the entire course of events that led to the French 
 Revolution we find abundant illustrations of the truth of the princi- 
 ple, that ignorance in the people governed is the only reliable support 
 of arbitrary power, and that as soon as light dawns upon them they 
 begin to examine and to question the claims of their rulers ; and, final- 
 ly; when they feel that they are capable of taking care of themselves, 
 they are as eager to assume the exercise of their newly-discovered 
 rights, as the youth, grown up to manhood, to escape from the re' 
 straints of paternal authority. It would be well for society if the 
 ruling power always had the enlightened foresight to keep pace, in 
 its concessions to popular demands, with the actual capacities of the 
 people for self-government ; and if, in times of revolutionary excite 
 ment, all who claim to be patriots had the wisdom and virtue to resist 
 impending evils, whether arising from monarchical, aristocratical, or 
 democratic ascendency. Then all Revolutions would be tranquil, 
 and would keep pace with the progress of knowledge and virtue. 
 " When reform has become necessary," says an able French historian, 3 
 " and the period of its accomplishment has arrived, attempts to 
 stifle tend only to hasten its progress. Happy would it be for man- 
 kind, could they properly estimate these changes; if they who 
 
 a. Mignet.
 
 CHAP. XII.] THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 845 
 
 possess too much would yield up a portion of their abundance ; and 
 they who have too little, would be content with what they really 
 needed. Revolution would then be divested of its horrors; and the 
 historian, instead of having to record a series of evils and excesses, 
 would have only to describe human nature become more wise, more 
 free, and more happy." But we must still bear in mind that republican 
 changes are not always salutary reforms. As the mass represents 
 the units of which it is composed, if the individuals are ignorant, and 
 corrupt, and selfish, it is impossible for the community to be intelli- 
 gent, and pure, and patriotic ; and without these qualities in the 
 people, democratic institutions may prove a curse rather than a bless- 
 ing. In all their struggles for liberty the French have overlooked 
 the necessity of first reforming themselves : they have begun where 
 the}' should have ended, and have ended without making progress 
 adequate to their efforts. They have still to learn the important 
 truth that the blessings of republican government are not to be ob- 
 tained by a change of institutions and forms ; and that they lie at 
 the end of a long course of toilsome discipline of moral effort, and 
 self-denying virtue. 
 
 TBS
 
 INDEX 
 
 THE GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL NOTES. 
 
 A 
 
 Ac'tium 
 
 Adrianople 
 ^Egean Sea 
 JF.K\na 
 
 P4OE 
 
 . .. 96 
 ,, 46 
 186 
 282 
 ,, 228 
 . 31 
 .. 74 
 
 Asia Minor 
 
 PAGE 
 
 28 
 
 Bologna 
 
 1MJ 
 
 544 
 
 Asia 
 Ascalon .. 
 Aspern 
 Attica 
 Athens 
 Jittalus 
 Atlantis 
 
 ""Q 
 285 
 ...... 491 
 29 
 , 47, 566 
 1C9 
 320 
 
 Brundusium 
 Bretigny 
 Brest 
 
 Breda 
 
 . 43 
 185 
 300 
 301 
 313 
 3J6 
 .. 373 
 
 jE'gos Pot'amos 
 ^EUilia 
 -*Et'na 
 JE'qitians 
 Agrigeu'tum 
 Agincourt 
 Aix 
 
 .. 86 
 108 
 .. 118 
 139 
 .. 110 
 303 
 172 
 .. 381 
 
 Austria 
 Augsburg 
 Austerlitz 
 Auerstadt. 
 Azores 
 Azof 
 
 B 
 
 Babylon 
 Bacchus 
 Balearic Isles 
 Baalbec ; 
 
 313 
 334 
 485 
 319 
 388 
 486 
 
 18 
 26 
 152 
 2-48 
 
 Braganza 
 Bruges 
 
 Bristol 
 Busiris 
 
 Burgundy, Transjurane. 
 Burgundy (Circle of)... 
 Burgundy, Upper 
 Busentinus 
 Buenos Ayres 
 Burgos 
 Busaco 
 
 392 
 
 . 404 
 488 
 . 531 
 222 
 , 230 
 . 271 
 . 596 
 . 379 
 232 
 . 485 
 490 
 . 492 
 
 Alexandria 
 
 .. 99 
 
 Alba 
 Al'ia, r 
 Al&ni 
 Jtlemarini 
 Alps 
 
 . . 126 
 .. 143 
 213 
 
 .. 21<i 
 .. 229 
 
 Aleppo 
 
 Algiers 
 Almanza 
 
 249 
 .. 33 
 335 
 404 
 406 
 
 Bagdad 
 Bavaria 
 
 Bayonne 
 
 266 
 270 
 286 
 301 
 404 
 
 Bukowina 553 
 Buda 554 
 Byzantium 218, 576 
 
 c 
 
 
 . 493 
 
 Bahamas 
 
 442 
 
 
 41 
 
 Baden 
 
 483 
 
 
 90 
 
 Bay len 
 
 489 
 
 
 . 279 
 
 Badajoz 
 
 493 
 
 
 119 
 
 Amboise 
 
 .. 342 
 381 
 
 Bautzen 
 Barbary 
 
 498 
 
 !.!!!! 509 
 
 Cadmus 
 
 30 
 
 
 41 
 
 
 000 
 
 Balkan, mts 
 
 522 
 
 Cap'ua 
 
 147 
 
 
 23 
 
 
 551 
 
 
 147 
 
 
 .. 232 
 
 Bartfeld 
 
 556 
 
 
 258 
 
 
 311 
 
 Bethoron 
 
 114 
 
 
 158 
 
 
 305 
 
 Bpachy Head 
 
 384 
 
 
 191 
 
 Antwerp 
 
 .. 345 
 
 25 
 
 Bender 
 Berlin 
 
 413 
 ..A.. 426 
 
 Caledonia 
 
 . 199 
 
 
 2-J5* 
 
 
 .. 109 
 
 Bellisle 
 
 432 
 
 
 254 
 
 Aquitaine 
 
 .. 300 
 317 
 
 Beresina 
 
 497 
 281 
 
 Caesarea 
 
 . 282 
 
 Calais 
 
 099 
 
 
 159 
 
 Bidassoa. 
 
 379 
 
 Calmar 
 
 308 
 
 
 .. 13!) 
 
 Biscay 
 
 Klackheath 
 
 462 
 302 
 
 Castile 
 
 . 317 
 319 
 
 Arbela . 
 
 100 
 
 Arabia 
 Arcadia 
 
 .. 39 
 .. 46 
 
 Blenheim 
 Boeotia 
 Bos'porus 
 
 402 
 30 
 . 219, 596 
 
 Cape Verd Isles.. . . 
 
 319 
 
 Carlowitz 
 Calcutta 
 
 . 551 
 395 
 
 
 .. 28 
 
 
 28 
 
 
 248 
 
 Cadiz. 
 
 402 
 
 
 . 48 
 
 Bouillon 
 
 280 
 
 
 518 
 
 Jlrgonautic expedition. 
 
 .. 33 
 
 150 
 
 
 300 
 
 Cairo.. . 
 
 470 
 
 
 307 
 
 
 467 
 
 
 . 249 
 
 Bohemia 
 
 313 
 
 Cape Breton 
 
 . 4->2 
 
 Arras 
 
 .. 378 
 . 466 
 
 Bourbon 
 
 3-27 
 336 
 
 Carribbee Isles 
 Ceres 
 
 . 442 
 . 26 
 
 
 557 
 
 
 395 
 
 
 143 
 
 
 . 17 
 
 
 495 
 
 
 . 166
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL INDEX. 
 
 Cerisoles . . ,- 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ... 336 
 
 Diana ,,.... 
 
 A.OE 
 
 B6 
 
 Gascony. 
 
 MBC 
 
 248 
 
 Otiylon 
 
 ... S94 
 ... 97 
 
 Dictator 
 Dnieper, >. 
 
 . .. 337 
 M9 
 
 Galicia 
 Gaeta 
 
 540 
 547 
 
 
 
 Doris. ............ . 
 
 . . 15 
 
 
 Idl 
 
 China 
 
 28ti 
 
 Don, r 
 
 71 
 
 Gela 
 
 115 
 
 Cherbourg , 
 Chatham i 
 Cliolet 
 Chateau Gonthier 
 
 ... 301 
 ... 372 
 
 . . . 4.:.9 
 
 ... 4o9 
 
 Dcrlne'uiii 
 Dominica 
 Dogger Bank 
 Dreux 
 
 ... . 281 
 .... 43 1 
 .... 411 
 341 
 
 Gerinania 
 Germanic (on fed.. 
 German Stales 
 Geneva 
 
 200 
 539 
 596 
 
 258 
 
 
 ... HI 
 
 Dresden 
 
 3r>t) 
 
 
 315 
 
 
 98 
 
 
 195 
 
 
 268 
 
 
 . .. 143 
 
 Dunbar 
 
 295 
 
 Ghent . . ..' 
 
 y 14 
 
 Cimbri 
 
 ... i7i 
 
 .. 489 
 
 Durham 
 Dublin. 
 
 .... 299 
 .... : J 07 
 
 Ghibcllines 
 
 2ii9 
 
 
 ...492 
 
 Dunkirk 
 Dwina, r 
 
 .... 372 
 389 
 
 Gilgal 
 Gilboa 
 
 59 
 60 
 
 
 . .. 89 
 
 Clusium 
 
 . .. 130 
 . .. 154 
 
 Dyrrach'ium 
 
 E 
 
 Ebro 
 
 .... 180 
 489 
 
 Gibraltar 
 
 403 
 301 
 
 Clastid'ium 
 
 . .. 156 
 
 
 16 
 
 
 ... 280 
 
 
 27 
 
 Corinth 
 Corinthian Isth 
 
 51 
 ... 4G 
 
 Gvtks 
 Goa 
 
 213 
 349 
 
 Corcy'ra 
 Coronea 
 Collatia 
 
 Corioli 
 Corsica 
 Copts 
 
 82 
 89 
 133 
 135 
 139 
 152 
 ... 221 
 
 Edinburgh 
 Edom 
 Edghill., 
 Egypt./. 
 Egypt, pop. of 
 Egrsta 
 
 ,, 4i'l 
 63 
 364 
 13 
 4(>9 
 119 
 
 Gottingen 
 
 Graces 
 Granicus 
 Gracchi 
 Granada 
 
 356 
 
 368 
 26 
 98 
 
 no 
 
 317 
 379 
 
 Cologne 
 Cor'dova 
 Constance 
 Copenhagen 
 Courland 
 Cobleniz 
 
 254 
 2(i9 
 Til 
 408 
 410 
 ... 451 
 
 Elate ia 
 Elbe, r 
 Elba 
 Emes'sa 
 Eniir 
 
 M 
 
 ,,,, 257 
 500 
 248 
 310 
 
 Grenada 
 Granville 
 
 Guadalete 
 Guadalquiver. 
 Guinea , 
 
 ... ,439 
 460 
 . 499 
 251 
 . ... 251 
 320 
 
 Corunna 
 
 ... 490 
 
 Epirus 
 
 44 
 
 Guienne 
 
 341 
 
 Crete / 
 
 ... 31 
 
 Eph'esus 
 
 57 
 
 
 432 
 456 
 
 
 . . . 56 
 
 Eretria 
 
 .... 85 
 
 H 
 
 Harpies 
 Halicarnassus 
 
 27 
 98 
 
 Cracow 
 
 ... 410 
 
 Ethiopia. 
 
 .... 37 
 
 Croatia 
 Cronstudt 
 Ctesiphon 
 
 542 
 , 553 
 .. 203 
 
 Euphrates 
 Euxine 
 
 ... 13 
 34 
 .... 56 
 
 Culloden 
 Cuba 
 Culm 
 
 422 
 
 ., 432 
 . .. 498 
 
 Eylau 
 
 F 
 
 Fates 
 Falkirk. 
 Ferrara 
 
 .... 486 
 
 .... 26 
 295 
 .... 544 
 
 Hastings 
 HalidonHill 
 Havre 
 
 , ,, 290 
 299 
 339 
 
 Cyclopes 
 Cyclopean structures.. 
 Cyrenaica 
 Cy'prns 
 
 22 
 .. 28 
 70 
 ... 80 
 
 Hanau 
 Ham : 
 
 Hebe 
 
 539 
 . . . . 560 
 14 
 26 
 
 Cys'icus 
 Cyc'lades 
 
 D 
 
 Damascus 
 Danube, r 
 Dacia 
 Dahnatia 
 
 86 
 ...522 
 
 62 
 171 
 
 200 
 208 
 286 
 
 Flanders 
 Fontenov 
 
 Frar.ks 
 
 Franche Comt6 
 Frankfort 
 Frejus 
 Frederickshall 
 
 , 230 
 378 
 . 421 
 144 
 216 
 270 
 379 
 419 
 473 
 415 
 
 Helen 
 Hebron 
 Hellespont 
 Hermean, pr. 
 Herculaneum 
 Her'uli 
 Hesse Cassel 
 Heidelburg 
 Hermanstadt 
 
 , 36 
 . ,., 60 
 , ,.. 79 
 154 
 200 
 334 
 539 
 539 
 553 
 5.^6 
 22 
 
 Dauphin 
 Dauphinv 
 Dantzic 
 Delphi 
 Denmark 
 Delhi 
 
 . 304 
 341 
 
 , , 486 
 47 
 , . 308 
 , 330 
 412 
 
 Friuli 
 Friedland 
 Frond} 
 Furiea 
 
 G 
 
 , , 268 
 . 487 
 , 377 
 24 
 
 . 37 
 
 Him'era, r 
 Hindustan 
 Homer 
 Holland 
 
 Hotel ties Invatides.. 
 
 117 
 120 
 253 
 35 
 313, 592 
 377 
 429 
 
 
 . .. 4'2() 
 
 Honduras 
 
 433 
 
 
 499 
 
 Gath 
 
 60 
 
 
 479 
 
 
 . 531 
 
 
 .... 99 
 
 
 .. 232 
 
 Dcbroczin... 
 
 .. 553 
 
 Gaza... 
 
 .. 157 
 
 
 .. 406
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL INDEX. 
 
 Hungary., 
 UjptuuiJ, 
 
 PAOE 
 
 .. 542 
 .. 101 
 
 Lib'anus, tnts 
 Lithuania 
 
 PAOE 
 
 282 
 312 
 
 Mons Sacer 
 Montserrat. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 .... 138 
 
 286 
 
 I 
 
 Iberus, r. 
 
 .. 157 
 
 Lisbon 
 Lisle 
 
 320 
 406 
 
 Moscow 
 
 Moldavia. . . 
 
 .... 287 
 434 
 
 Livonia 
 
 407 
 
 Moravia 
 
 313 
 
 Lissa 
 Liegnitz 
 
 427 
 431 
 
 Morgarten 
 Morea 
 
 313 
 316 
 
 Ickni 
 Illyria 
 Illyrians 
 
 .. 195 
 95 
 .. 153 
 
 Ligny 
 Locrians 
 Loinbardy 
 Loire, r 
 
 501 
 92 
 216 
 857 
 
 Moluccas 
 Mons 
 Montenotte 
 
 Mount Tabor. 
 
 .... 393 
 .... 403 
 
 . . , 465 
 472 
 
 Ingria 
 iiingpruck. 
 
 ,. 411 
 .. 541 
 
 Louisburg 
 Lodi 
 Lodomeria 
 
 422 
 466 
 540 
 
 Moeskirch 
 Muses 
 Munda. 
 
 .... 477 
 
 .... 26 
 182 
 
 
 .. 19 
 
 Lusitanians 
 Lucan 
 Luxemburg 
 
 1(56 
 194 
 313 
 
 Mussulman 
 Munster 
 Munich 
 
 ... 247 
 .... 39'J 
 42(1 
 
 Ipsamboul 
 [psus 
 
 .. 38 
 .. 103 
 
 Iris 
 Ireland 
 IBSUS 
 
 26 
 
 292 
 .. 98 
 
 Lusalia 
 Lutter 
 Lubec 
 
 313 
 256 
 257 
 
 Mythology 
 Myc'ale 
 Mysore 
 
 22 
 .... 80 
 .... 443 
 
 Ispahan 
 Islamism 
 
 ., 351 
 . . 516 
 51 
 
 Luneville 
 Lucca 
 Lydia 
 
 479 
 544 
 56 
 
 N 
 
 Nanpactus . . 
 
 46 
 
 J 
 
 Jabesh Gilead 
 
 . . 59 
 
 Lyons 
 
 M 
 
 Mars 
 Marathon 
 Mantinea 
 
 209 
 
 25 
 75 
 90 
 
 Navarre 
 
 .... 115 
 317 
 
 
 .... 347 
 
 Naseby 
 
 365 
 
 Namur 
 
 384 
 
 Janus t Temp, of 
 Java 
 
 . . 129 
 .. 395 
 164 
 
 Narva 
 
 403 
 
 Nazareth 
 
 472 
 
 
 517 
 
 
 455 
 
 Maccabees 
 
 113 
 
 Napoli di Rom. 
 
 518 
 
 
 . . 486 
 
 Malta 
 
 152 
 
 Naples, Kingdom of 
 
 546 
 
 
 14 
 
 Marseilles 
 
 157 
 
 
 24 
 
 
 39 
 
 Magnesia 
 Mauritania 
 
 161 
 171 
 
 Neap'olis 
 
 .... 115 
 
 272 
 
 
 61 
 
 
 24 
 
 Maiius 
 
 174 
 
 Newbury 
 
 364 
 
 Juno 
 
 Jupiter Am.) Temp of. . 
 Judaism 
 
 K 
 
 Kamarina 
 Kashgar 
 
 .. 25 
 .. 129 
 .. 245 
 
 118 
 . 350 
 . 499 
 
 Mfesia 
 
 200 
 245 
 
 New Netherlands.. . . . 
 
 373 
 
 Nerwinden . 
 
 385 
 
 Madgebure 
 
 358 
 365 
 
 Newfoundland 
 Neva, r. . . . . 
 
 .... 406 
 411 
 
 Madagascar 
 
 394 
 
 Nile 
 
 16 
 
 Madras 
 
 395 
 
 Nineveh 
 
 17 
 
 Madrid 
 Manilla 
 
 404 
 405 
 432 
 
 Nice 
 Nice 
 
 .... 281 
 . ... 336 
 .... 373 
 
 Kalamatia 
 Khorassan 
 
 Kiev 
 
 Kolin 
 
 ! Martinique 
 
 Si Mans 
 Mantua 
 ,, ; Malta 
 
 . JoO , \f flrpn jrrt 
 
 432 
 455 
 4fiO 
 .... 466 
 .... 469 
 .... 478 
 
 Normans 
 Normandy 
 
 Nottingham 
 
 487 
 
 . ... 262 
 272 
 ... 309 
 ,, . 364 
 .... 158 
 
 Krasnoi 
 Kurdistan 
 
 L 
 
 I^acedae'mon 
 Laconia 
 Laviuium 
 Latium 
 Laurentinea 
 Lancaster 
 La Hogue 
 
 , 497 
 . 222 
 
 . 35 
 
 . 48 
 . 1261 
 . 126 
 . 129 
 . 301 
 
 515 
 
 Memphis 
 
 .... 485 
 509 
 14 
 25 
 
 Numantia 
 
 Nymphs 
 Nystad 
 
 ... 166 
 359 
 .... 24 
 .... 416 
 
 Messenia 
 
 51 
 
 
 
 Oceanvs 
 
 ... 28 
 
 ... 29 
 
 
 69 
 
 Meg'ara 
 Melos 
 Messana 
 Metaurus 
 Mediolanum 
 Mecca 
 Medina 
 
 .... 83 
 .... 83 
 .... 115 
 
 .... 159 
 .... 217 
 .... 247 
 .... 247 
 252 
 
 Olmutz 
 Olympius 
 
 ...542 
 ... 27 
 
 
 to 
 
 Onod 
 
 ...556 
 
 
 ... 489 
 
 
 
 26 
 
 Ormus 
 
 ...348 
 
 
 89 Minos 
 
 . 34 
 
 
 . 301 
 
 
 
 41 
 
 
 ...363 
 
 Levant 
 
 . 316 Miletus 
 317 Minden . . . 
 
 57 
 
 Ostracism 
 Ostia 
 
 ... 77 
 . . 131 
 
 
 
 465 
 
 
 529 
 
 Llbva. . . 
 
 . 37 Muabita... 
 
 . 40 1 Oudenarde.. . , 
 
 .. 404
 
 IV 
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL INDEX. 
 
 p 
 
 Palestine 
 Pamiaus 
 
 PAGE 
 
 , 40, 57 1 
 .... 52 
 
 Radstadt 
 
 FAGE 
 
 ... 406 
 
 Stockholm 
 
 PAGE 
 
 415 
 
 Raudiau plain 
 Reyuosa 
 
 ... 173 
 ... 490 
 
 St. Albans 
 St. Just 
 
 .... 305 
 
 31*7 
 
 Par'os 
 Pannonia 
 Panor'mus 
 
 76 
 
 105 
 .... 117 
 
 Rhone, r 
 Rhodes 
 Rheiins 
 
 172 
 250 
 ... 272 
 
 St. Quentin 
 St. Petersburg 
 St. Christophers 
 
 , . 339 
 .... 389 
 406 
 
 Parihia 
 Palmyra 
 Paris 
 Papal power 
 Papal States 
 r .via 
 rampeluna 
 Passau 
 
 25(i 
 544 
 258 
 258 
 .... 337 
 
 Richmond 
 Riga 
 Rio Janeiro 
 Roncesvalles 
 Roiim 
 Rochclle 
 Roussillon 
 
 30(i 
 ... 407 
 488 
 ... 258 
 ,..281 
 357 
 . , , 379 
 
 St. Lucia 
 St. Vincents 
 St. Eustatia 
 St. Cloud 
 St. Bernard 
 St. Domingo 
 St. Helena 
 
 .... 438 
 438 
 , . , . 439 
 473 
 477 
 4-1 
 .... 501 
 230 
 
 Palatinate 
 Pinna 
 Peneus, r 
 Persia 
 
 Persian Gulf 
 
 334 
 
 544 
 44 
 56 
 57?, 249 
 101 
 
 Rome 
 Rubicon, r 
 Russia 
 Riituli 
 Ryswick 
 
 s 
 
 Saturn 
 
 . , , 582 
 , . 150 
 , 287 
 ... 314 
 ... 385 
 
 . . . . 24 
 
 Suabia 
 Surinam 
 Sussex 
 Switzerland 
 Syria 
 
 270 
 ,, 393 
 
 .... 290 
 ... 269 
 
 G2 
 84 
 
 Per'gamus 
 
 .... 162 
 
 S -b' 's 
 
 116 
 
 Pelusium 
 
 .... 250 
 
 ; * f) 
 
 554 
 
 Pesth 
 
 ... 549 
 
 T 
 
 Tan'agra 
 Taren'tum 
 Tarquin'ii 
 Tarsus 
 
 82 
 . 116 
 131 
 165 
 
 Peterwardein 
 
 .... 55' 
 
 Philistines 
 Phocis 
 Phrygia 
 Pharsalia 
 Pharos 
 
 4 
 
 103 
 180 
 181 
 185 
 
 riardis 
 Samaria 
 Sabine, ter 
 
 Sardinia 
 
 57 
 64 
 128, 578 
 147, 578 
 ... 152 
 
 Piudus, mts 
 Picts 
 Pisa 
 Piedmont 
 Pluto 
 
 44 
 
 0.17 
 
 319 
 421 
 .... 24 
 
 Saguntum 
 
 Saxons 
 Saracen 
 Sassanida 
 
 156 
 
 219 
 224 
 248 
 ... 249 
 "58 
 
 Teg'yra 
 
 Terouane 
 Tewkesbury 
 
 Teutonic Knights. . . 
 
 91 
 171 
 254 
 
 sou 
 
 312 
 . ... 515 
 
 Platae'a 
 Placentia 
 Plantagenet 
 Potidse'a 
 Po, r. 
 Pontus 
 Pompeii 
 Pollentia 
 Poictiers 
 Poles 
 Portugal 
 Pomerania 
 Podolia 
 Pondicherry 
 Pm'lar 
 
 280 
 291 
 . 82 
 , 158 
 173 
 200 
 229 
 252 
 311 
 318 
 358 
 390 
 , 395 
 15ti 
 
 Saxony 
 
 Savoy 
 Salonica 
 Salona 
 Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. .. 
 Saumur 
 Savenay 
 Salamanca 
 Sardinia, kingdom of. 
 Scythia 
 Scone 
 Scio 
 Selinus 
 
 ... 270 
 310 
 355 
 519 
 520 
 ,,,527 
 459 
 460 
 493 
 515 
 , 71 
 .... 295 
 518 
 , 119 
 315 
 
 Tell, Wm 
 Tenedos 
 Temeswar 
 Thebes in Egypt. , , , 
 Thebes in Gr 
 Thessaly 
 Theseus 
 Tlieban War 
 Thrace 
 
 Thracian Cher 
 Thera 
 
 Thuringia 
 Theiss, r 
 
 314 
 519 
 ... 554 
 14 
 30 
 31 
 , . , 33 
 33 
 , , , . 71 
 77 
 , 96 
 121 
 182 
 270 
 548 
 
 Prtetorian Guards . . 
 
 Prague 
 Pruth 
 Pragmatic Sanction. 
 Preston Pans 
 Punic 
 Pultusk 
 Pultowa 
 Presburg". 
 Pyramids 
 Pydna 
 Pyrenees 
 
 a 
 
 Quatre Bras 
 
 B 
 
 Babbah 
 
 . 271 
 355 
 414 
 419 
 .. 421 
 152 
 . 410 
 .. 412 
 . 555 
 . 16 
 
 no 
 
 252 
 501 
 
 . 62 
 
 558 
 
 Serbs 
 Seringapatam 
 Sicyon 
 Sidon 
 Sicily 
 Sileucia 
 Sirmium 
 Sileucidte 
 Silesia 
 Slavonia 
 Slavonians 
 Sleswick 
 Smolensko 
 Solway Frith 
 Soissons 
 Sorbonne 
 
 , , . 550 
 . ... 443 
 52 
 ,... 61 
 ,... 84 
 102 
 218 
 249 
 .. 313 
 390 
 . . . . 550 
 , . . 407 
 . ... 412 
 .... 204 
 .... 255 
 .... 333 
 . .. 156 
 
 Titans 
 Tiber, r 
 Tibur 
 Ticinus 
 Tilsit 
 Tours 
 Tournay 
 Toulon 
 Torgou 
 Tobngou 
 Torfou 
 Torres Vedras 
 Tokay ... 
 Troy 
 Trezene 
 Trib'uncs 
 Trebia. . . 
 
 22 
 125 
 218 
 153 
 , 487 
 ,, 253 
 254 
 404 
 431 
 441 
 459 
 ,, ,492 
 556 
 .... 35 
 79 
 133 
 158 
 
 Spires 
 
 334 : Trasimtnus 
 
 158 
 203 
 
 Strabo 
 Stirling 
 
 .... Ill 
 .... 295 
 
 Tripoli in Af. 
 
 250 
 
 Tripoli in A. . . 
 
 282 
 
 Raven na 
 
 i<a in lilies 
 
 229 
 403 
 
 Stralsund 
 Strusburg 
 
 .... 356 Transylvania 
 .... 385 Trafalgar....- 
 
 390 
 484
 
 GEOGRAPHICAL INDEX. 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ....509 
 
 Valenciennes 
 
 PAGE 
 
 378 
 
 Waterloo 
 
 PAOB 
 
 501 
 
 
 . . . 516 
 
 
 24 
 
 Wavre 
 
 501 
 
 Tripolitza 
 
 517 
 
 Vesta 
 
 26 
 
 
 
 
 .... 150 
 
 Veii 
 
 142 
 
 
 306 
 
 Tunis 
 
 .... 151 
 
 
 145 
 
 Weser, r. 
 
 . 257 
 
 Turin 
 
 157 
 
 Vesuvius 
 
 199 
 
 Westphalia 
 
 . 360, 487 
 
 
 231 
 
 
 215 
 
 WickliSe. 
 
 . . 331 
 
 Tudela 
 
 490 
 
 Venice 
 
 233 
 
 Wittemberg 
 
 332 
 
 Tyre 
 
 61 
 
 Versailles 
 
 380 
 
 Windsor 
 
 375 
 
 Tyne, r 
 
 ... 204 
 
 
 460 
 
 VVilna 
 
 . .. . 495 
 
 Tyrol 
 
 .... 313 
 
 
 166 
 
 Widdin 
 
 558 
 
 
 
 
 386 
 
 
 . . . 314 
 
 TJ 
 
 
 Vigo Bay 
 Vimiera 
 
 402 
 489 
 
 Wolsey 
 
 330 
 
 Ukraiha 
 
 Umbrii 
 
 390 
 .... 484 
 "02, 578 
 
 Vittoria 
 Volga, r 
 
 494 
 137 
 389 
 
 Y 
 
 249 
 
 Utica 
 Utrecht 
 
 .... 22 
 .... 159 
 . ... 344 
 
 Volhynia. 
 rulcan 
 
 . . 528 
 .. 25 
 
 York. 
 
 < 
 
 209 
 1 
 
 
 
 w 
 
 
 z 
 
 160 
 
 v 
 
 
 Wales 
 
 ... 294 
 
 
 386 
 
 Valencia. 
 
 16 
 
 
 . . . -. 410 
 
 Zenta 
 
 390 
 
 Vandal*.. 
 
 219 
 
 Waxram. . . , 
 
 481 
 
 Zomdorf 
 
 429
 
 PUBLISHED BY IVISON AND PHINNEY, NEW YORK. 
 
 WILLSON'S HISTORICAL SERIES. 
 .. ~+~ 
 
 SBAL OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 15ist0rual 
 
 " Histories make Men Wise." BACON. 
 
 I. 
 
 n. 
 
 in. 
 I 
 
 JIT. 
 | Y. 
 
 J 
 
 WILLSON'S JUVENILE AMBEICAN HIS- 
 
 tory. 31 cents. 
 
 WILLSON'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED 
 
 States. *75 cents. 
 
 WILLSON'S AMERICAN HISTORY. School 
 
 Edition, $1 25. Library Edition, $2. 
 
 WILLSON'S OUTLINES OF GENERAL His- 
 
 tory. School Edition, $1 50. University Edition, $2. 
 
 WILLSON'S COMPREHENSIVE CHART OF 
 
 American History. $6 00. 
 
 19
 
 PUBLISHED BY IVISON AND PHLNTSTEY, NEW YORK. 
 
 WILLSOFS HISTORICAL SERIES. 
 
 FRANKLIN, THI PRINTER'S BOY. 
 
 No. 1. WILLSON'S JUVENILE AMEKICAN 
 
 History. For Primary Schools ; on the same general plan as 
 the History of the United States. Embracing the most interest- 
 ing and morally instructive incidents and events in American 
 History, commencing with the Life of Columbus Handsomely 
 illustrated. 160 pages. 31 cents. 
 
 FRANKLIN, THK PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 This work is designed for younger 
 ^ classes in Schools. Many of the lessons 
 are accompanied by judicious pictorial 
 illustrations ; allusion is constantly made 
 to the geography of the parts described, 
 and numerous maps associate historical 
 events with their localities. 
 
 Prom the Western School Journal. 
 " Mr. Willson, to avoid the errors of 
 his predecessors, has investigated closely, 
 has faithfully collated and verified his 
 facts and dates, and, as a natural conse- 
 quence, has produced a nost accurate 
 work. The narrative is given in a clear, 
 simple style, and the biograph ; tal sketches 
 'A ara forcibly a- id vividly descriptive." 
 
 20
 
 PUBLISHED BY IVISOX AXD PHINXEF, NEW YOEX. 
 
 WILLSOX'S HISTORICAL SERIES. 
 No. 2. WILLSON'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED 
 
 States. *75 cents. 
 
 Plan of the Siege of Quebec. 
 
 
 Commencing with the discovery of 
 
 America, and brought down !> the niiii- 
 
 vith century. Tlie 
 
 M tlie following claims to 
 
 :'s;\vr: 1st, superior <:< 
 ~<1, chronological arrangement oi 
 
 civc } 
 
 maps :ii!<l churls, ami copioua Geograph- 
 
 :r:;l N"o;<.-s. exhibiting > the e^c 1 , ami | 
 
 iportant localities referred 
 
 '.',0 Qiii'stions. An Appendix 
 rw the Constitution of the linked 
 
 
 
 i the uiitliora work on 
 i r Constitutional Law. 
 Wlllson'a History of the United 
 lia.s !M-C:I introduced into the 
 I':il)iic t'-chools of New York. City, the 
 Normal School in Albany, the Public 
 Schools in Newark, Brooklyn, l^.cliester, 
 l!ulf:do, Cincinnati and St. Louis, &C., 
 as well as in reat numbers of Male 
 and Female Academies ainl Seminaries 
 in all parts of the country. During the 
 first year of its publication, fvuriein 
 thousand copies were sold. 
 
 1'rota the numerous 'ecommendations and notices of the work the Publishers 
 select the following: 
 
 S'epe nf Yarktown. 
 
 
 
 r 
 
 ^: 
 
 ActUJeiy 
 
 NOTICES. 
 
 " Boston, Dec. 6th, 1845. 
 
 " I consider it the best, and in reality the only 
 School History I have ever seen, adapted to the 
 wants of our Common Schools. 
 
 "JOSHUA BATES, 
 " Principal o r Brimmer Grammar School." 
 
 " P>urln.^ion, N. J., 1 1th mo. Ctli, 1815. 
 " VVillson's I'istory of the United States for the 
 use of Schools, I have read through with peculiar 
 satisfaction. If any other book, compiled for tlie 
 fame purpose, equals it in combining brevity wiih 
 clearness of detail, impartiality with a manly regard 
 
 for national interests, elevation ot style with the simplicity due to youth, and especTady 
 geography with history, I am not acquainted with it. 
 
 icqi 
 
 "The" wri;er seems to be imbued with a just percept' -n of Hie wants of the Echclrir 
 and the facilities due to the teacher. 
 
 "JNO. GRISCOM." 
 
 21
 
 , - r 
 
 PUBLISHED BY IVISON AXD PHINNEY, NEW YOEK. 
 
 WiLLSOiVS 1IISTOIUCAL SEU1ES. 
 
 NOTICES OF WILLSON'S UNITED STATES. 
 
 From the Pennsylvania Enquirer. 
 
 " We bfiieTe it to be by far the most accurate sehool-hi story of the United Status , 
 ever published. The style of the work will be found peculiarly clear and conciss and 
 at the same time easy and attractive." 
 
 Vrom the Courier and Journal, Albany. 
 
 41 An improvement upon any history of the United States of the kind that w 6 have 
 met. It is comprehensive enough to Kive a full idea of the subject, and Is brief enough 
 rot to be tedious to the pupil. Besides, it is accurate and reliable iu its facts." 
 
 From the New Jersey Advocate. 
 
 " A work superior, in many respects, to all that have preceded it, as a text- 
 of American History." 
 
 
 story 
 JVarraffansett Fort and Swamp. 
 
 by h 
 
 s'.vei 
 
 From the Povglikerpsir. Journal. 
 
 "Willson's Historical Works will 
 confer a lasting benefit ou our 
 country." 
 
 From the Jfeieark Daily Jldcrrtiscr. 
 
 " If the present work is not all 
 Hint we desire, it is, we are persuaded, 
 the nearest approximation to a true 
 standard of School-History that has as 
 yet been made." 
 
 From the JVew York Observer. 
 
 . " Mr. Willson is favorably known 
 United States History, which is distinguished for its accuracy and comprehen- 
 
 From the American Journal of Education. 
 
 "We know of no other volume of American History which it so accurate, and al 
 | the same time so full." 
 
 From the Rook Committee, Cincinnati. 
 
 "The Text-Book Committee bavins examined Marci'.is Willson s History of the 
 
 i United Stales, would hereby recommend it as a suitable book for the ue o.' the Com- 
 
 j mon Schools of the city. We would suggest, that hereafter it should be used in the 
 
 > place of Mrs. Willard'a Abridgment. The work now recommended is one 01" jjreat 
 
 accuracy, dear and forcible style, and the arrangement of the work is natural. The 
 
 / marginal dates, (new style,") as here arranged, we consider of great importance to a 
 
 ', school-book, when dates are taught as a part of Common .School Instruction. 
 
 On the K.I February, I s !7, the Board of Trustees and Visitors of tho Common 
 Ucnools of Cincinnati unanimously adopted tlio.following resolution. 
 
 "Resolved, That t he United States History, by Marcius Willson, be. rnc 'he fame 
 is hereby adopted by the Hoard of Trustees and Visitors, as the text-book to De used in ' 
 (he Common Schools of Cincinnati, in place of the Abridgment, by Mrs. W/illard." 
 
 22
 
 PUBLISHED BY IVISON AND PHINNEY, NEW YOKE. 
 
 WILLSOX'S HISTORICAL SERIES. 
 
 
 Stone JUlar fvund at Copan, six feet square and four feet high. 
 
 No. 3. "WILLSON'S AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 School Edition. 12mo. 1 50. Libraiy Edition. 8vo. $2 00. 
 
 School Edition and University Edition, comprising Book T. Historical Sketches 
 
 of the Indian Tribes, with a Description of American Antiquilics ;>nd an Inquiry into 
 
 i'.'ii', mid the Origin of the Indian Tribes. Book If. History of the United 
 
 . 'same as the above.) with Appendices additional, showing, 1st. : our Relations 
 
 'iropesn History during our Colonic.1 existence ; an Account of the Refor, 
 
 . of tlie Puritan Sects, &c. ; 2d, An Account of Parties in England during our 
 
 ]!i-'v:>!ution, and the European Wars in which England was involved by that Con' cat ; 
 t 3d, An Examination of the Character, Tendency and Influence of our National Govern- 
 
 . Mid sin Historical Sketch nf '.he Parties that divided the Country from the close 
 
 Revolution to the termination of the Second War witu England. Book Ilf, 
 
 { Part 1. History of the present British Provinces, from their Early Settlement by the 
 
 French to the present time, comprising History of the Oanadas, of Nova Scotia and 
 Cape Breton, Prince Edward's Island, New Brunswick and Newfoundland. Also, the 
 Karly History of Louisiana. Part 2. History of .Mexico, from the Conquest by Cortez, 
 lo the commencement of the War with the United States in 1846. Part 3. History of 
 T.'x;is. from the time of its discovery by La Salle in 1684, to the time of its admission 
 into the American Union in J645. Appendix. Sketch of the Mexican War. One vol. 
 laru'e oi-.tavo. 706 pages. 
 
 Rook 1. contains Plans and Drawings of all the principal Mounds and Ruins 
 known to exist in our own territory, and in other portionsof the Continent. The results 
 hen's Travels in Central America and Yucatan are succinctly given ; and copies 
 mot interesting drawings, made by Mr. Catherwood, have been engraved ex- 
 for this work. 
 
 NOTICE. 
 
 From the Madison Banner, Indiana. 
 
 "It contains a very large quantity of matter, and is decidedly better adapted for 
 \eademies than any other history of the American Continent. It will also 
 'nvalnable to all persons and classes as a book of reference. Indeed, we hr\ 
 !,. or perused any historical work with more satisfaction, interest, and delight." 
 
 23
 
 PUBLISHED BY IYISON AND PHINNEY, NEW YORK., 
 
 WILLSON'S HISTORICAL SERIES. 
 
 NOTICES OF WILLSON'S AMERICAN HISTOEY. 
 
 From the Cincinnati Herald, 
 "The bost compendium on the subject we have ever seen." 
 
 From the Brooklyn Eagle, JV. Y. 
 
 "We have little but commendation to bestow on this handsome, neatly -printed 
 j work." 
 J From the Cincinnati Chronicle. 
 
 "We commend this book to the public as one of universal interest." 
 
 From the New York Tribune. 
 
 " The most succinct and comprehensive history of America that ha ail*n under 
 our notice." 
 
 No. 4. WILLSON'S OUTLINES OF GENERAL 
 
 History. Now first published, Aug. 1854. School Edition. 
 
 600 pages. Octavo. $1 25. 
 
 University Edition. 850 pages. Octavo. $2 00. 
 
 The Publishers submit to Teachers, Superintendents of School?, &c., " WILLSON'S 
 OUTLINES OF GENERAL HISTORY," with the cuufldeni belief that it will commend 
 itself to them as decidedly superior to any other work on the same subject. 
 
 Tho SCHOOL EDITION of the Outlines embraces COO octavo pages extending 
 from the earliest Historic periods to the year 1853. In Grecian and Roman History. 
 the line fixed by historical criticism is drawn between the uncertain and legendary, and 
 the authentic. The results of the investigations of those able modern writers, Thirl- 
 wall, Grote,Niebuhr, and Arnold, are given and the authorities on all disputed points 
 of general interest are cited. 
 
 A prominent characteristic of the work is its UNIT V OF PLAN, which is preserved 
 throughout, the attention of the reader being confined chiefly to those nations whose 
 successive history has exerted a marked influence on thecivilization of mankind. Thus 
 we have, after a brief notice of the early Age*, the History of Greece, until that country, 
 and all the nations around the Mediterranean, are absorbed in the overshadowing power 
 of the Roman Empire ; then the Roman WORLD until the dissolution of the Western 
 Empire ; then succeeds the gloomy period of the Middle Ages, but marked, in regular 
 succession, by the mighty colossus of Saracen dominion, the Feudal system, Chivalry, 
 and the Crusades: the period closing with the discovery of America, and the dawn of a 
 
 - brighter future. The several succeeding centuries are also so marked by prominent and 
 i mostly successive events as to render considerable unity of narrative easily attainable ; 
 ! the Sixteenth by the Age of Henry VIII. and Charles V., and the Age of Elizabeth 
 
 the Seventeenth by the Tliirly Years' War, the English Revolution, and the Wars of 
 Louis XIV. The Eighteenth by the War of the Spanish Succession, Peter the Great of 
 Russia atid Charles XII. of Sweden, the War of the Austrian Succession, the Seven 
 Yi ars' War, the American Revolution, and the French Revolution the Nineteenth by 
 1 the Wars of Napoleon ; the Peace, and Reforms, which followed ; and the still recent 
 { Revolutions which have converted Europe into a great Battle Ground for Freedom. 
 j The STYLE in which the work is written will be found to be chaste, vigorous and 
 | elevated the PROPER NAMES are so accentuated, especially in Grecian and Roman 
 
 * History, that the student will readily form the habit of their correct pronunciation; in- 
 ' stead of questions, a full ANALYSIS precedes each chapter or section; nearly eight 
 j hundred GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL NOTES illustrate and explain what- 
 
 ever is essential to the full elucidation of the text ; a;id eighteen HISTORICAL MAPS, 
 ? of the full size of the page, are found at the close of the volume, with each, an nccom- 
 i panying page of explanatory matter. The Historical Maps are, 1st, Ancient Greece; 
 ' sM, Athens and its Harbors; 3d, Islands of the ^Egean Sea; 4th, Asia Minor; 5th. Per- 
 j iiau Empire in its greatest extent; 6th, Palestine, or the Holy Land; 7th, Turkey in 
 i
 
 PUBLISHED BY IYISOX AST) PHINNEY, NEW YORK. 
 
 WILLSOX'S HISTORICAL SERIES. 
 
 NOTICES OF WILLSOK'S OUTLINES- 
 
 j Europe, with the, Bosphorus ; 8:h, Ancient Italy; 9th. Roman Empire in its greatest 
 extent ; 10th, Ancient Rome; llth, the World at the time of the discovery of America; 
 } lith, Battle Grounds of Napoleon ; l:i;h, France-. S;>nin, and Portugal, with the divisions j 
 best known in History ; I-Jih, Switzerland in Cantons, and the Countries around the } 
 Baltic; 15; h, the Netherlands, (now Holland and Beldam;) 16tb, Great Biitain ; 17th, j 
 Central Kuropa ; Isth, United States and their Territories. These maps are 11- . atly ' 
 colored in both editions of the History. 
 
 It is confidently believed that no School History hitherto published has been pro- } 
 I pared, with greater care, or more judicious adaptation to the wants of the student. 
 5 The U.NiViiRSlTY EDITION of the Outlines contains the '-School edition" com- 
 J plcte, ami also an additional p.-irt of 250 pages, called the " Philosophy of History ;" the ( 
 { whole foMn'.nir a iar^c and h;::::! o;nu ociavo of 850 p-igea. Tiie subjects treated of in / 
 { the 12 chapters of this part of the work, are, lt, The Antediluvian World, with its > 
 geological history, &c. ; 2d, Karl} Egyptian, Assyrian, and Babylonian f'ivili/tition; 3d, 
 Character and extent of Civilization during the Fabulous period of Grecian History; 
 
 Olut! 
 
 The design of this additional part to the " Outlines" is to show the advanced Stu- { 
 | tent not that this World's History is "a mighty maze without a plan" but that the | 
 | great events in its drama the rise, growth, and decay of its mighty Empires its great 
 J political, moral, and intellectual Revolutionary changes, and the varying phases of its i 
 J civilization, lie along an unbroken chain of causes and effects that have in great part > 
 been developed by tlie profound researches of a Gibbon, a Hallam, a Niebuhr, an Ar- ( 
 < nold, a Sismondi, a Grote, and a Guizot, of whose labors our author has freely availed j 
 | himself. These closing chapters of the work exhibit great extent of research ; and al- 
 \ though they condense a great amount of matter within a small compass, it is believed 
 they will compare favorably,!!! point of style and interest, with the best Historical arti- 
 cles in the English Reviews. 
 
 From many highly favorable notices of Willson'a Outlines of History, we select 
 the following : 
 
 From the New York Commercial Advertiser. 
 
 " We have examined the volume with some (Are, and find it unusually accurate, 
 and admirably adapted to the use of schools. Mr. Willson has not adopted the easy 
 method of copying from Rollin and other previous compilers, but has prepared his 
 work from the best sources from the writings of Thirl wall, Grote, Niebuhr, Arnold, 
 and other historians of the highest reputation." 
 
 From the Religious Herald (Hartford). 
 
 " A valuable text book of history, designed for the higher class of schools and for J 
 colle'ges. The author is well known by his United 'Stales History, which is so exten- 
 sively used in the common schools. The present work, modest in pretension but solid j 
 in worth, appears to be well adapted to the wants of the student." 
 
 From the Christian Intelligencer. 
 
 " Our literature in the department of History is here enriched by a most valuable } 
 addition. The author has embodied the results of the best writers, grouping together J 
 the main subjects of history, so as to present them, as much as possible, in out COM- 
 } pletc view to the reader ; and, in this way, to fasten them on the memory, instead of 
 { descending to such minuteness of detail as would have a contrary effect. The work, 5 
 ' while admirably adapted to teachers and schools, for whose use it seems to have IKJOII { 
 designed, is worthy the attention of the general reader." 
 
 F-- Tithe ,V. Y. Tribune. J 
 
 " It forms a useful book of reference, as well as a manual for instruction, compris- } 
 J ing the results of the latest investigations by the best modern scholars, especially Thirl- * 
 ' wall and Grote in Grecian, and Niebuhr and Arnold in Roman HisJory. 
 I 
 
 26
 
 PUBLISHED BY IVISON AND PHINNEY, NEW YORK. 
 
 WILLS02TS HISTORICAL SERIES. 
 
 NOTICES OF WILLSON'S OUTLINES. 
 
 From Arthur's flame Gazette. 
 
 " A very good text book for the higher class of schools, judiciously divided, and 
 condensed with great care. It cannot fail to prove valuable." 
 
 From the Chicago Christian Times. 
 
 "Universally well adapted to the purposes for which it has been written." 
 i 
 
 From the Christian Observer, Philadelphia. 
 
 u We commend it to Parents and Teachers as an interesting and valuable text-book ( 
 i of History." 
 } From the Congregational Journal. 
 
 "The work displays much historical research, and is one of the most useful books { 
 of the kind now before the public. The style is good, and the execution neat and at- ! 
 tractive. It is not only valu able as a text-book for schools, but as a manual for the 
 general student." 
 
 From the JV. Y. Evangelist 
 " It has the merit of conciseness, clear arrangement, and good style. The compiler 
 is favorably known by previous works of a similar nature, and writing with an eye to 
 the practical use of schools, he has prepared a. very useful and compendious book, 
 which will answer the purpose with good effect. The opinions and views of the author, 
 so far as they have been permitted to color the narrative, are decidedly favorable to 
 religion, democracy, and intelligence. The pupil will obtain not only a comprehensive 
 and accurate outline of the world's history, but a store of admirable sentiments and 
 views, which will prepare him for a more enlarged acquaintance with this important 
 department of knowledge. It is finely illustrated witk maps, and a great variety of 
 notes are appended, which throw much incidental light upon the text." 
 
 From the Boston Traveler. 
 \ " It is a work which will take a commanding place in a most valuable department 
 
 ! of literature. It will be admitted, we think, to be a text-book of uncommon merit, em- 
 bracing a well-digested compend of Ancient and Modern History, and a clear, well- 
 t written, and judicious view of the Philosophy of History. While the style is lucid, the 
 j plan is exceedingly comprehensive ; and a subject which is too often dry and unin- 
 { teresting, is thus made attractive, as well as instructive, for study or perusal. The 
 i whole arrangement of the work is such as cannot fail to be satisfactory and profitable 
 { to students." 
 
 From the Philadelphia Daily News. 
 
 | "This is certainly no ordinary work replete as it is with multifarious information, 
 J conveniently arranged, and admirably illustrated with maps and notes. We are struck 
 > with the extensive research and great patience which it everywhere exhibits. The au- 
 | thor has been careful to introduce no incident or event, however interesting it might 
 { seem to the student, which has not been fully authenticated authenticated, too, by such 
 } writers as Niebuhr, Grote, Arnold, Thirlwall, &c. ; and, besides, it possesses the advan- 
 tages of an easy, lucid, and attractive style art advantage which will greatly enhance 
 i its popularity." 
 
 From the Daily Missouri Republican. 
 
 " Mr. Willaon's History of the United States, and an American History for the use of 
 } schools, have a large sale and a deserved popularity, on account of their philosophical ar- 
 J rangement and great accuracy. His latest work, 'The Outlines of History,' (University 
 
 ! Edition,) is a benutifully-pniited volume of 850 pages, compiled, not from such works 
 as the convenient pases of Rollin, or the graceful fictions of I>ivy alone, but, from the 
 * more rigid works of Thirlwall and Grote, Niebuhr and Arnold, Sismondi and Guizot, 
 } &.c. We recommend this work to teachers. It seems to us admirably adapted to teach 
 } students accurate facts, and likewise principles and reasons." 
 
 I 
 I 
 
 27
 
 PUBLISHED BY IVISON AND PHINNEY, NEW YORK. 
 
 * 
 
 WILLSON'S CHART-CLARK'S ENGLAND, 
 j ^.. . 
 
 j No. 5." WILLSON'S COMPREHENSIVE CHART 1 
 
 !of American History. $6. 
 This is a neatly-engraved Chart of American History ; colored, varnished, and 
 mounted on rollers, and measuring nearly five feet by six. It is arranged on a plan j 
 ! essentially different from any other historical chart; and yet it is so simple, thai an j 
 intelligent child can understand it. It embraces the History of all the Countries, ' 
 t Colonies, States, and Provinces of North America, from their first discovery and settle- } 
 \ meat down to the present time. 
 
 The following, selected from numerous commendatory notices of the Chart, arc 
 submitted to the attention of those interested in the cause of education : 
 
 NOTICES. 
 
 From Nath. Cross, Prof, of Languages in the University of Nashville, Tenn. 
 
 " Nashville, Feb. 1847. 1 
 
 " Willson's Chart of the United States I consider superior to anything of the kind { 
 I have seen. It is comprehensive without being confused, and the'plan and arrange- j 
 ments simple, and therefore easily understood. 
 
 " In the hands of an intelligent teacher, I should suppose that no device could 
 be better to convey to the pupils in our Common and Elementary Schools a com- * 
 plete knowledge of their country." 
 
 From the Hon. Win. A. Walker, J\l. C., formerly Superintendent of Common Schools 
 
 for the city and county of Neu> York. 
 
 " It is to the study of History precisely what a map is to the study of Geography; 
 and the writer considers one quite as necessary as the other. With the use of the 
 Chart, the undersigned verily believes that as much might be taught to a class in a 
 month, as by present means in a year." 
 
 From Charles Bartlett, Esq., Principal of the Poughkeepsie Collegiate School. 
 "This is a splendid Chart, most admirably adapted to the purposes for which it 
 was designed ; and I believe that an individual or a class, aided by it, would obtain 
 more available knowledge of American History in one month than could be obtained 
 without it in six months. This Chart ought to find a place in every Academy and 
 Common School in the United States." 
 
 CLARK'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. A concise! 
 
 History of England, from the Invasion by the Romans to the 
 Accession of Queen Victoria. Written on a new plan, with 
 particular reference to Chronology and Facts. By W. Clark, 
 Esq. Edited, with Additions and Questions, by Prof. J. C. Moflfat, 
 of Princeton College. 362 pages. 75 cents. 
 
 From the New York Evangelist. 
 
 "Just what it purports to be a concise, clear, and methodical outline of English j 
 history, well adapted for school purposes and for young readers. It gives an easj 
 narrative, and condenses all the principal facts in a way to convey much instruction, 
 and at the same time to excite a desire for larger works." 
 
 Upon itjown merits it has been introduced into several of the best schools in 
 New York City, into the Brooklyn Female Academy, Asbury Female College, New 
 Albany, Ind., Hughes' High School, Cincinnati ; and it is commended in strong terms i 
 by Edward Cooper, Esq., late Editor of the N. Y. District School Journal ; and also ' 
 bj Prof. J. S. Hart, Principal of Philadelphia High School. 
 
 28
 
 Date I 
 
 
 
 
 A 000414725